


Han-Kichi: An Omikuji Epilogue

by ironlotus



Series: The Year of Bad Luck [2]
Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: A little angst with a happy ending, AU, Established Relationship, F/M, Raunchy shit, Relationship Issues, Semi-Canon-Divergence?, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-01-04 09:00:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 58,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18340433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironlotus/pseuds/ironlotus
Summary: [The sequel to Omikuji! Please start there, or be confused!]May this be the year that brings happiness like no other!Again, the same New-Years' wish, but Kagome's never been the kind of girl who gets exactly what she wishes for. At least this time she's starting the year off with a promising relationship, and the power that comes from knowing better than to let herself be fortune's fool. No matter what her Omikuji fortune says, she's going tomakethis the year that her wish comes true. It's totally within her power.... Right?





	1. Act I, Part I: Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand we’re back! Belated as always because real life is a thing and being an adult is hard. But we’re back!  
> Just a heads up, duders. These chapters are long. I tried to make the story rich enough, and conversely pared down sufficiently so I wouldn’t overwhelm myself by making the story too complex, but, uh…  
> That said, I can’t say that I’ll be posting frequently but I do hope to be posting regularly. There will only be three of these suckers, COME HELL OR HIGH WATER, but as they’re long and I’m trying to be realistic about my production schedule, I’m anticipating MONTHLY updates. I know that each chapter is divided into parts, and theoretically I could update with just one part each time, but, all of these parts are meant to be read together, so that’s not how it’s gonna go down. I hope you understand!  
> Anyway, enough from me! I’m happy to be posting again! Let me know what you think – I’ve missed you guys!

-+-

 

**Han-Kichi : An Omikuji Epilogue**

Act One

In Five Parts

 

-+-

I

Prologue

             

_May this be the year that brings happiness like no other!_

              It was the same wish every time. After the year she had just had – her Great Curse – she really felt the need for a complete change in her luck. And this Omikuji fortune would deliver it.  Today, New Year’s Day, her new beginning was in her very hand.

              Sesshoumaru walked up to her and looked at her curiously, maybe noticing the suddenly anxious expression on her face. His eyes went to her fingers, as though anticipating the big reveal. But Kagome wasn’t quite ready to unfold the paper that would determine her fate. With a fortifying breath, and a reminder that ‘Whether in good or bad fortune, you should tenaciously do your best; You can carve out your own fortune’, as the posted placard to her left said, she braced herself.

              “Okay,” she uttered aloud, finally ready. Slowly – ever so slowly – she opened the parchment. She looked past the paper and into the air ahead of her until the fortune was completely unfolded. “Okay,” she said again, before letting out a long breath, which puffed into the cold winter air like a cloud of steam. For the briefest moment, she had the urge to crumple her fortune up, shove it into her pocket and never look at it again.

              But Sesshoumaru was having none of that. “What does it say?” His resonant voice beside her shattered her concentration.

              Heartened a little by his presence beside her, Kagome turned her gaze up to his perfect face. He was excruciatingly handsome, and his expression of unsatisfied curiosity was both charming and new. He moved closer to peer over her shoulder, eyes flicking around over the sheet in her hands. With a deep breath in, she reassured herself one last time. Then she too looked down.

              And gasped.

              But her sudden delight vanished when, vision refocusing, Kagome looked at  _both_  of the characters at the top, and not just the one that first caught her eye.

              Not just “吉” – Luck – which would have merited the gasp of excitement, but “半吉” – Half-blessing. Whatever remained of her good mood fizzled.

              After struggling through twelve months with the cloud of Dai-Kyou,  _Great Curse_ , over her head, she was barely gripping onto her tenuous hold on reality. She had been hoping for something that turned things around from the way they had been the year before; something definite. Smooth sailing – happiness like no other – is it  _really_  so much to wish for?

              But apparently it must be. Those two characters in bold print were a splash of lukewarm water that spoiled her mood. “Han-Kichi”. Half-blessing. Not  _all_  bad, but just uninspiring enough to make her throat tighten in anxiety.

              She skipped over the poem at the top to read through the different fortunes specified below. It was a mix of good and bad, as one would expect from a ‘half-blessing’. Progress in studies, which ominously included learning “that which you did not seek to know”. No marriage proposal, again, even though this time it was less inconceivable a prospect than it had been at the start of the previous year, considering the man beside her.

              What a mess of a fortune.  

              Frustrated, she turned her eyes back up to the poem at the top. Reading last year’s poem through again at the end of the year, just a few minutes ago, had kind of pulled everything together into a tidy lesson about life. Maybe reading it more carefully at the outset would help her to make sense of this half-boiled fortune in her hands.

              But no. Despite multiple re-readings, the pretty image of cherry blossoms falling and being swept up on the breeze gave her no further insight to the flip-flopping fortune written below it [1].

              Her hands trembled in the cold, and she folded the strip of paper up slowly, brow furrowed in thought.

              “What will you do with it?” he asked. “Will you tie up it as you did the previous?”

              Kagome shrugged, looking at the man whom she would challenge for love, and fail— who would not propose to her. She knew they were just silly words; that she didn't need to live her life by this little sheet of paper. But last year's fortune had been frighteningly accurate, and though she had come out of it for the better, having  _tenaciously done her best_ , she had a sinking feeling that she was in for a similar struggle this coming year.

              With a deep sigh, she reached her hand out for his and deposited the paper, now tidily folded once more, into his palm. “You decide,” she said, and his eyes widened minutely in surprise. “It was nice to read back on it at the end of the year,” she mused. “But I don't know that I want to have it on my mind for the next twelve months.”

              “You will not wonder?” His eyebrow quirked upward in disbelief.

              “I mean, I will. But only for a while. Life is too short for a long memory.”

              His lips squeezed together in a funny way, as though what she said unsettled him. “I will meet you by the steps,” he said finally, closing his fingers around the fortune. She nodded and turned away, the burden of deciding her fate now tidily passed off to his eminently capable hands.

.

半吉　

Han-Kichi : Half-Blessing

 

Not at all like snow

so ready to melt away—

these cherry blossoms,

fallen but then lifted again

by storm winds in the garden.

 

恋愛 Love: Your challenge will meet with failure.

病気 Illness: Prepare for a long illness.

学問 Studies: You will learn even what you did not desire to know.

争事 Competition: You will be your biggest competition **.**

願事  Your Wish: Your wish will be realized.

商い Business: Do not mix business and pleasure.

縁談 Marriage Proposal: It will not come.

待人 An Expected Visitor: They will arrive when you need them.

旅立ち Travel: Travel will prove fruitful.

失せ物  A Thing You Have Lost: You will find it if you search for it.

 

-+-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Footnotes:  
> [1] This, and all the other waka in this fic, are English translations of 5-7-5-7-7 syllable poems by Tonna, which I am excerpting from the book Just Living: Poems and Prose by the Japanese Monk Tonna, by Steven D. Carter.


	2. Act I, Part II: Business

-+-

 

**Han-Kichi : An Omikuji Epilogue**

Act One

In Five Parts

 

-+-

II

商い Business: Do not mix business and pleasure.

              There were less than twenty steps between Ueda-sensei’s door and Sesshoumaru’s. Since this favored professor-advisor had come in to replace Naraku after he passed away, Kagome had made the trek between the two offices what felt like at least fifty-thousand times, free from any burden that could take the bounce from her step. This time, though, she was filled with a mild sense of trepidation.

              Not five minutes ago, as she had passed Ueda-sensei’s door, he called her into his office. "Higurashi-kun!" His unkempt black hair and bespectacled face made him look almost like a caricature as he popped his head out through the open doorway. Kagome pivoted in her step and made her way to the delightful man she had so come to respect in the span of a few short weeks.

              "Can I do something for you, Ueda-sensei?"

              He waved dismissively but ushered her into his office. “I have a few notes for the preliminary outline for your dissertation." He moved to his desk, making a great show of shuffling several messily stacked piles of papers, scattered here and there on his desktop, before finally finding the one he was searching for. "Ah, here it is." He handed it over to her, and Kagome was surprised to see the alarming amount of red marks on the top sheet.

              He must have noted her dissatisfaction, because he again waved her off. "Don't worry about that. It’s a first draft. There's always a million things to improve on for the first draft. I know it’s just an outline, but the outline is the spine that holds your work together; have an open mind as you read through, and make notes of some of those comments moving forward, so we can make this the best work it can be." He paused and gave her his equivalent of a wizened grin. "Trust me. There will be many, many revisions, and many, many more red marks in your future. Such is the life of an academic."

              His withering sigh made Kagome laugh and dissipated her concerns. She tucked the papers into a dark blue folder, and then inside the confines of her backpack.

              "Do you have any pressing appointments this afternoon?"

              "I was going to stop by Aotsuki-sensei's office for a minute. Was there something else?" she replied, zipping her worn yellow backpack shut.

              His lips thinned but he shook his head. "I was heading to the library and thought I might introduce you to one of one of my favorite resources there – have you met the librarian, Miss Sachiko? – but it’s nothing that can’t wait. I do wonder at Aotsuki-sensei, though."

              Kagome paused in the motion of swinging her bag over her shoulder, attention caught. “How do you mean?”

              He smiled at her again before waving a hand as he so often did, this time to have her return to her seat.

              "I am not at all opposed to your cultivating a mentorship with Aotsuki-sensei, you know, Higurashi-kun. But I would like you to consider that the world of academia is quite small, and there is already a little cloud over your head, from what I understand."

              Kagome blinked in surprise. "A cloud?"

              "Ah—” he looked so profoundly uncomfortable, and at the same time a little annoyed, as though he regretted saying anything at all, but he forged ahead as delicately as he could probably manage. “Myouga-sensei and I had a lengthy conversation sometime after I began working here, and he filled me in on the unpleasantness that you experienced at the hands of your previous advisor – I want you to know I’m aware of and sensitive to what you went through because of him. But due to his poor character and conduct, it seems that he set out to harm you not only directly, but through more far-reaching means as well. You may have heard he had a hand in your lack of success in obtaining an internship this past summer…?"

              He seemed not to want to get into any of the specifics, and Kagome could hardly fault him for that. His usually pleasant face was twisted with a bit of discomfort and distaste. Kagome had gotten to know him well enough at this point to know that his distaste was not directed at her but at the man that had tortured her the year prior.

              "I had heard that there was some negative feedback provided to the prospective employers..." she trailed off. Even if she didn’t point her finger or say his name, they both knew what she meant.

              "Yes, exactly. Myouga-sensei of course provided ringing approvals for you, as your work deserved, however, there seem to have been other forces at work – I hesitate to say 'slandering' as it’s too overt – but at least, not f-fully endorsing your academic honesty, as it were." He was starting to stutter, and his eyes were riveted to a point on the wall approximately a foot to her left. "This, combined with a certain rumor regarding your relationship with the senior staff... you can see where I am going with this."

              "Of course," her voice was light, but her stomach felt full of lead.

              "It would just be best if you were to seek Aotsuki-sensei’s counsel and mentorship through easily verifiable means – email – which can be demonstrated should the question ever arise, and avoid spending time in his office as much as possible, especially behind closed doors.”

              Kagome nodded her understanding. "I will do my best to follow your advice," she replied meekly.

              "It pains me to have to say any of it," he shook his ahead again, the expression of distaste doubling. "But as I said. Academics are gossips, and it would not do to damage your good name, when you have so much potential. I wonder about Aotsuki-sensei, not taking the initiative in steering your interactions down that path, even knowing all of this."

              Kagome thought to herself that at one point, he  _had_  tried to steer her toward a digital-only relationship, and oh, how miserable that had made her! Sesshoumaru had a high view of things, as only  _he_  could, being infinitely old and at the top of the food-chain, as it were. Little things like her academic reputation could hardly bother him.

              They exchanged a few further words on the topic of her dissertation topic and outline, the change in gears serving to cleanse the bitter taste of their previous topic just long enough to see her out the door with a smile on her face.

              But now, halfway between Ueda-sensei’s room and Sesshoumaru’s, that brief conversation had unsettled her to the point of considering curtailing her visits to her lover-slash-mentor on campus. Her gut clenched, the reality of Naraku’s lingering influence of her life weighing heavy on her shoulders.

              Sesshoumaru was in his office – she could feel that hot current of his youki, flooding through the hallways, twining about her legs, tugging at her as though encouraging her to take the few steps to cross the remaining space between them.

              A part of her wondered how Myouga-sensei could stand such blatant, overt, and constant displays of his strength. Every other youkai she knew was discreet with their youki, restrained and controlled when they had the occasion to display it. She had never felt the  _full_  brunt of his demonic aura, granted, but the small taste of it she had when he faced down Naraku and brought him to his end had been so oppressive that she could barely breathe, barely move. Though he held back the vast majority of it the rest of the time, he seemed to see no need to inhibit the overwhelming strength of his aura the way the others did. It was always like a maelstrom around him. How could Myouga-sensei stand it?

              But then she remembered that Myouga-sensei called him Sesshoumaru- _sama_  and had an almost unhealthy reverence – or fear? – for him; he would have no complaint to make, no matter how Sesshoumaru behaved. At least not when he was within hearing distance. Myouga-sensei could have a distinctly ingratiating side to him that she had only come to notice recently… it was almost comical. Especially considering that though Myouga-sensei was, by human standards, Sesshoumaru's boss, in the youkai world he was a tiny flea to be crushed under Sesshoumaru's foot – a peon, whose subservience was not only expected, but given without hesitation.

              Sesshoumaru’s youki tugged insistently at her ankles, and Kagome shook away her wayward thoughts. She started forward again, knowing he’d felt the hesitation in her approach. He would also have heard the entire conversation on the other side of the wall from his office. A little annoying that she had little privacy, but it was handy to not have to explain every little thing to him, since his senses were so sharp and his intuition so keen.

              But despite having heard the conversation, he greeted her at the door of his office, ushered her in, and locked it behind them with a click. Kagome stared at him, a sense of foreboding rushing through her as he shed his human trappings, human features melting away as the signs of his heritage appeared on his face. His eyes more gold, his voice pitched lower, smoother, and a marked gleam on his canines as his lips parted in a predatory smile.

              “Didn’t you hear  _anything_ he said?” Kagome asked, pulling her backpack in front of her, covering herself with it in an unconsciously defensive posture.

              He snorted. Of course he’d  _heard_.

              “Fine—didn’t you  _pay attention_?”

              Slowly, gracefully, he began his advance, closing in on her.

              “Sesshoumaru—” She fought a sigh as he reached out, trailing a claw-tipped finger down the side of her neck. “It may not matter to you, but I’m taking what he said seriously!” She pivoted, turning her back to him, inadvertently – and dismayingly – releasing a surge in her spiritual power as she pushed him slightly away.

              “Mixed signals,” he murmured, pressing into her back, lowering his lips to her exposed nape.

              Kagome shuddered as he kissed her, but turned laughingly back around to face him, hand planted squarely on his chest to resist him. Her eyebrows shot up in challenge. “I’m setting a boundary. Not here.”

              He made that little huffing sound as he stepped away from her. She blinked and he was wearing his human face again. In three steps he had reached for his messenger bag, slung it over his shoulder, and made his way back to the office door. “Come,” he said.

              “Where are we going?” Kagome asked, giddiness and relief filling her.

              He cocked an eyebrow at her and held the door open for her to proceed him into the hallway. His place, then. Kagome took three steps for each of his two, rushing to wind her scarf around her neck and zip up her winter jacket. February was deep winter still, and the dry air crackled with cold.

              They were passing the little kombini, less than two minutes from his apartment, when Kagome’s phone beeped, and she felt a surge of happiness when she saw her cousin’s name on the notification. Sesshoumaru must have felt the rising in her spirits, for he slowed his pace to walk beside her, head tilted slightly in question. “Ichiro,” she said by way of explanation, breath puffing little clouds in the air before her. “He’s asking about a good time to call.”

              “Not tonight,” was his low, even reply. Kagome glanced up at him, trying to gauge his mood without success; his eyes were fixed forward, his expression blank, a pared down version of the haughty dispassion she saw only when he was in youkai form.

              She swallowed her discomfort as Tanaka-san, with his pleasant smile and sparklingly mischievous eyes, greeted them at the door of Sesshoumaru’s building. Sesshoumaru breezed past him without evincing any sign of having noticed his presence at all, but Kagome stopped to return his greeting. “How are you?” She asked, unwrapping her scarf.

              “Perhaps another time,” Tanaka-san murmured, eyes on Sesshoumaru’s stony expression. He turned back to Kagome and gave her a dazzling smile. “He seems in a hurry,” he added, giving her a wink.

              She waved, a little perplexed, and entered the elevator behind her host in silence.

              As it turned out, Sesshoumaru  _was_  in a hurry. No sooner had his apartment door closed behind them than his lips were on hers, fingers unzipping her jacket and ripping it from her body, steps herding her toward the bedroom.

              “Sesshoumaru,” she mumbled around his lips, appreciating his eagerness but still trying to keep things on track—this time, when she would usually be in his office, was reserved for the discussion of his father’s texts and her developing reiki.

              “Raincheck,” he grunted against her throat, recognizing her resistance for what it was. She melted against him, her concerns allayed, and she felt the vibration of his voice against her neck once more, with the ‘hn’ she had grown to know so well.

              Things moved quickly. One moment she was tripping over the threshold into his bedroom, and the next she was bare from the waist down before him, perched on the edge of his mattress. He hadn’t bothered with his clothes at all, though at some point he’d flung his coat away. Instead, his focus was entirely on her.

              In moments like this, in the shadowy darkness of his bedroom, his reflective golden eyes focused so sharply on her every moment, his body and his senses tuned in entirely to her, Kagome saw him for what he really was – a predatory species, keening in on his prey. He hadn’t turned on the heater [1] – her skin erupted in gooseflesh, and she shivered from the cold as well as from the thrill as she reached out for him.

              Sesshoumaru settled on his knees before her, tucking his face into the black curtain of her hair and burrowing his nose into her neck. The sweetness of this gesture was offset immediately by the way his fingertips trailed a scandalous heat up her thighs. His touch was fleeting, spreading her lips and tapping at her opening to assess her readiness for him, before he pulled his hand away from her to work himself out of his jeans.

              His left hand impatiently worked his flesh, already like iron in his hand, while his right found the hardened, sensitized nub of her clit and began a paradoxically slow, teasing rhythm against it. As his hips leaned in toward her, Kagome felt the chafing cold of his zipper on her inner thighs, and, since her hands were busy propping herself upright, reached her feet out and slid them down against his legs to lower his jeans out of the way.

              She had just managed this when he pressed forward, achingly slow, until just the head of his erection had disappeared between her folds. His breath was harsh and he trembled with restraint. “I thought you were in a rush?” she teased, hooking an arm around his neck and tangling her fingers into his hair.

              He grunted, gripping her hip with a sharply-clawed hand, but otherwise remained still. She let loose a soft giggle, surprised and delighted at how he was fighting to maintain control over himself this way. She breathed in deep, taking in the sweet, heady scent of his skin, and wriggled her bottom closer to him.

              His hand gripped her tightly to hold her still, but his restraint was fleeting; she wriggled again and he loosened his grasp, shifting upward so that he bore down on her a little as he pressed forward into her pliant wetness.  

              Kagome gasped, clutching him tightly to her as he settled against her, as deeply he could manage in this position. His thumb persisted in its gentle pressure against her most sensitive place, he ground his hips against hers. For a moment her breath hitched—he’d bumped her cervix and it was both uncomfortable and tingle-inducing—then she relaxed in his hold and pushed herself forward to meet his thrusts.

              Her skin was sensitized anywhere exposed to air, and the tickling brush of his hair, loose from its ponytail, against her legs sent electric sparks shooting upward. The wet sounds coming from between them, in harmony with his harsh breathing in her ear, wound her tighter and tighter around him. She was close.

              The hand on her hips moved down and grabbed her by the ass, kneading into the cheek and then pulling her into him. The arm that propped Kagome up collapsed, and the one she wound around his neck released him, as he leaned into her, pushing her into the mattress.

              She felt damp under her T-shirt, sweat beading between her breasts. Her abdomen squeezed each time she curled her hips up to meet him, her dewy skin sticking to his a little every time they touched. The silky, fine silver hairs that trailed from his belly button on down felt rough as he ground against her.

              His hands found their way under her knees and he hoisted her legs up and over his shoulders, and with the stuttering, jarring movement, Kagome lost herself. Head falling back, she saw stars. Her body, now limp, still managed to writhe around his where he was deepest within her. Sesshoumaru, trembling, continued to pump into her, his pace becoming frenetic now that she had let herself go. He didn’t bother holding out any longer than he had to—within the space of one deep, shuddering breath, he, too found his release.

              Kagome, body still humming, registered that he picked her up and settled her in bed, and then himself beside her. Comforter and body-heat cocooning her from the cold, Kagome found sleep.

              She woke much later, feeling the heavy weight of Sesshoumaru’s blanket as he uncovered himself. It was impossible that he hadn’t heard the change in her breathing and the beating of her heart as she came out of slumber, or seen the moonlight reflecting off her eyes, but he seemed not to have noticed it as he gently brushed her hair over her shoulder, where it fell onto the pillow. His eyes were on her but his gaze was pointed inward; he stood still over her for a long moment. Kagome’s breath caught in her throat.

              He turned, the silky curtain of his silver hair swishing in his wake, and padded out of the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

              Kagome lay in the silence for a long time, a heat behind her eyes and a tightness in her chest that she couldn’t quite explain. When she realized that her anxiety was rising, she blinked herself out of her stupor and focused on her breathing, the way her therapist had instructed: inhale, hold the breath, exhale slowly. It had taken her several weeks after Naraku’s death to start meeting with a therapist, but thank goodness she had, Kagome thought, imagining Murasaki-sensei’s calming voice guiding her through her breathing exercises.

              She closed her eyes again, but sleep eluded her.

              Minutes ticked by.

              The clicking of the door handle made Kagome’s eyes pop open. Sesshoumaru moved silently back to the bed, shifting the sheets to settle under them, sitting upright against the headboard. Kagome turned, trying to look over her shoulder at him. His eyes were unfocused, directed at the view outside the window. It was snowing again.

              Kagome’s lips parted to say his name, to ask if everything was alright.

              “Sleep,” he murmured the command, his hand gently touching the crown of her head. She sealed her lips, looking at him a moment longer, before she settled her head on the pillow once more, that familiar tightness again coiling around her heart.

 

-+-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN for Act I: I mean. A lot in there. And a lot of feelings. But like, they have to boink too, right? That’s a lot of words that add nothing to the plot!! What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts on where things are going!  
> Footnotes:  
> [1] Cold: Fun fact, many buildings, even the newer ones, do not have central heating! Room heaters, small stoves or heat lamps, or gas heaters are commonly used. I used to have a gas heater that had a spot for a kettle on top—get your heat, humidity, and tea all in one go!


	3. Chapter 3

-+-

 

**Han-Kichi : An Omikuji Epilogue**

Act One

In Five Parts

 

-+-

III

争事 Competition: You will be your biggest competition.

 

              The second Sango was out of the house, Kagome scrambled into the living room and settled herself down in the middle of the couch. Her practice place. Early in January, Sango had announced her intention to ride out their apartment lease until it ended in March, when she and Miroku would be moving in together. They already had a verbal agreement with their new landlord, whose current tenants were a pair of college seniors expecting to graduate on time. Since then, Sango had spent increasingly more time away from home, overnighting in her own room in what was now mostly Kagome’s apartment, at most once a week. So Kagome had gotten into the habit of conducting her training in the middle of the couch, in the middle of the living room, with no concern for interruption.

              Well, except for Sesshoumaru. He had an uncanny knack for interrupting her via text, almost unerringly, just right as she was getting into it.

              Tonight, she had zero worries that that would happen. He was out of town for a short business trip: a book signing tour, with ten locations across four days of travel, mostly to small, niche bookstores. He was a widely purchased and widely read author with his fair share of accolades, but there were few such fervent fans of history, and appearances at larger locations would be a waste. “At most, I expect twenty to thirty readers at each site,” he had said, when he told her about the trip a week prior, “but my publisher seems to be under the impression that these kinds of events really boost sales, even with limited attendance.”

              And while he would be busy, so would she.

              She flipped through her training manual, the one she had compiled after exhaustive reading, reorganizing and interpreting the texts Sesshoumaru had lent her, and opened it to a well-worn page near the beginning. Training sessions always began here. Quickly, she reread the highlighted sections, as she did every time, and then crossed her legs on the couch before closing her eyes.

              What used to be an exhaustingly laborious exercise spanning hours in her first days of training now came almost as easily to her as breathing. And indeed, it all began with her breath. Deep breaths in, slow breaths out, and nearly instantly she could feel the surging, electrical sensation coursing down her arms to her fingertips. With her mind’s eye focused on the soft pink glow within her, she traced it up through her arms and to her heart, where the fount of her energy was located.

              This was the first stage. It had taken her the greater part of a month to master.

              Now came the second stage.

              Kagome breathed in deeply, pushing the energy outward toward her fingertips, feeling them grow hot with concentrated reiki, then she breathed out, and pulled it back in quickly before shutting it off altogether. Her fingers went suddenly cold. Again, on a deep inhalation, she focused on the heart of her energy— _her_ heart – and pushed the reiki out to her fingertips in a sudden burst, before retracting it and turning it off again on the exhale.

              Ten minutes of this, and she blinked her eyes slowly open. The second stage had come much quicker than the first. Figuring out where her reiki stored itself and learning to access it was a much greater challenge than growing used to opening and closing the tap. The first stage was about familiarity. The second, reliability.

              The third was control.

              There were several things she had to learn here; rate of flow, volume, and intensity. Volume was the first hurdle. Increasing volume seemed an impossibility—for now, decreasing it was her goal. She had started on this one just a few days before Sesshoumaru left.

              Kagome furrowed her brow as she turned her attention to her manual, flipping to the next page. She reread it carefully, then looked at the margin where she had doodled a little drawing of a bathroom sink. A trickle, at first. Honestly, she was having a hard time differentiating rate of flow and volume, but talking it through with Sesshoumaru had landed her on this metaphor and it had been at least a little effective so far.

              She imagined a tiny, thin stream of water pouring from a sink spout, only a few droplets at a time.  _It doesn’t matter how quickly they drip_ , she reminded herself.  _Just that it’s only ever a few drops at time._  She breathed deeply and steadily while she focused on this image, before turning her attention inward.

              Deep breath in, push the reiki out. She tried for the trickle but it rushed forward just the same way it always did. She exhaled, trying to pull just a thread of it back in, but the sum of it rushed back to her heart as usual. She closed the tap and fluttered her eyes open.

              In this manner, she practiced. Visualization, complete concentration, breathe in and push, breathe out and pull. But despite spending an hour at it, every trial was the same as the first; no change in volume.

              She gave up for the evening. By the end of these sessions, she was so spent she could barely drag herself off the couch.

              A cup of ramen, and then bed. She was out before her head hit the pillow.

              Two days later, after classes were finished for the week and after she left her appointment with Murasaki-sensei, she returned to campus to hunker down in the library. She had a lot to do, and never enough time to do it in, what with her spiritual practice and her lover also warring for her attention. Sesshoumaru would be home tomorrow morning, and she wanted to be free to spend time with him. They had made plans for the morning, which she knew would extend into the afternoon because they always did, and again for Sunday evening.

              So she labored through reading assignments and draft revisions and synthesis essays and a take-home short quiz, and when she finally looked up at the clock, it was a quarter past two in the morning. But at least she was done, for the most part, and would have a little time on Sunday to finish what was left.

              She was coping with the work overload very well, and she was proud of herself. Murasaki-sensei had been very complimentary regarding Kagome’s progress when they met today. When Kagome had first gone to see her, it was just after school had started up again, and the additional burden of resuming her schoolwork had been the straw that broke the camel’s back. She had been in a fragile state, unable to manage her anxiety, experiencing flashbacks and night terrors, with no idea how to cope despite the strong front she presented to her friends and family. But together with Murasaki-sensei’s help, they’d turned things around with surprising efficiency.

              Privately, Kagome wondered if keying into her reiki hadn’t helped that along. She had heard and read about the healing powers of Miko, after all, and there was nothing to say she hadn’t been inadvertently turning that healing in on herself. With that last thought, she braced herself against the frost, and stepped out into the night.

              Perhaps from force of habit, her mind returned to her breathing exercises, and she timed her steps to her breath until she reached home in half the time it normally took her. Oddly reinvigorated from the cold air and her brisk pace, Kagome settled down in her usual spot on the couch, crossed her legs and stared out into the living room.

              She could feel her heart pounding in her chest from the exertion of her walk, her nose still tingled from the frigid winter breeze. She felt alive and connected to herself, and closing her eyes for sleep seemed somehow impossible right now.

              “Just for a little bit,” Kagome piped happily to herself, throwing off her coat and cozying into her usual position. She skipped her warmup and jumped right into Stage Three. A thin trickle. Remarkably, the reiki flowed from within her almost instinctually, which freed her mind to focus on narrowing the stream as it coursed down her arm.

              Kagome launched herself off the couch the second she had closed off the tap, jumping in the air with arms raised and a wild cry of delight spilling from her lips. “I did it!” She crowed, bouncing a lap around the living room before eagerly landing on the couch once more and trying again.

              What was it that Sesshoumaru said? The student practices until they get it right—The Master practices until they cannot get it wrong?

              Thirty minutes later, she had managed the narrow stream on nearly three quarters of her attempts, and she was glowing with victory.

              Kagome’s celebrations paused. She was  _really_   _glowing_. She looked at her reflection on the windowpane, and the hazy pink atmosphere that floated like a rolling cloud around her. Her cheeks flushed hot with pleasure, as she took a moment to absorb the heady sensation of success that filled her. She might not have mastered the trickle yet, but, overcome with elation and confidence, she resolved she’d try for the flood.

              Settling into her couch, she closed her eyes.

 _Not a trickle this time,_ she told herself.  _A flood_.

              A deep breath in—

              The narrowed spout of her reiki widened, and widened, and widened again, until it traversed the expanse of what her mind’s eye could see, and her spiritual energy burst forth in a massive wave.

              Kagome could feel its warm, comforting softness pour from her fingertips in torrents, filling the room from floor to ceiling in the span of that single breath.

               _Now pull it back_ , Kagome thought, beginning her exhalation, vaguely aware of the sound of a baby crying in the distance.

              BAM!

              Someone was pounding on her front door.

              Kagome gasped, cutting off the pathway of her reiki back through her fingers to her heart, before the totality of it had been swept from the room and back within her.

              Something snapped.

              Like a punch to the gut, Kagome flew sideways off the couch, colliding forcibly with the bookshelf at the other end of the room. In that one moment, the majority of the residual reiki had dissipated, but what little bit of it remained, like little streams of lightning whipping across the floor, flew to her side and soothed the ache of her impact.

              The pounding at the door had stopped.

              Heart knocking about in her ribs, Kagome glanced at her watch as she limped over to the genkan. It was well past three in the morning. She swung the door open, breath leaving her lungs in a pant, only to be sucked back in on her gasp.

              Before her stood a middle-aged man whose hand, arm, and shoulder smouldered, black and charred and crumbling. He wheezed, looking up at her through a pained grimaced as he stumbled back against the wall.

              She recognized him – a good-looking man, who lived somewhere on one of the three flights above their apartment. “What on earth--?” The words tumbled from her lips and she reached out to him, but he held up his good hand to stave her off.

              “I know Sesshoumaru-sama said you would do no harm,” he managed, voice thready, shaking. “But we have a  _baby_ \--!”

              Suddenly, she felt it. The black fog that emanated from him. Youki.

              It moved to her, and where she might expect him to call out her fear, instead she felt that wave of coercive calm. “ _Please_ ,” he pleaded, through gritted teeth, anger evident in his eyes.

               _Oh no,_  Kagome took a step back.  _He’s **afraid**  of me._

“Please, stop.” He shook his head, as though trying to gather his wits. “Don’t do this here.”

              She stayed in the hall until he had reached the bottom of the stairs below and turned the corner, before stumbling dazedly into her apartment, uncaring of the open door.

              A commotion outside took her to the window, through which she saw the man shepherding a group of four people – no; youkai, they  _must_  be youkai – one carrying a crying baby, across the street and through an alley. All that time, they glanced in fear over their shoulders, locking onto her silhouette behind the glass.

              She waited until they disappeared from sight, until she could no longer feel their presence nearby, before putting on her coat and shoes, locking her front door behind her, and running blindly to Sesshoumaru’s building, where she tripped over the doorstep into Tanaka-san’s arms, and promptly threw up all over his shoes.

 

-+-

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN for Act I: I mean. A lot in there. And a lot of feelings. But like, they have to boink too, right? That’s a lot of words that add nothing to the plot!! What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts on where things are going!


	4. Act I, Part IV: An Expected Visitor

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**Han-Kichi : An Omikuji Epilogue**

Act One

In Five Parts

 

-+-

IV

待人 An Expected Visitor: They will arrive when you need them.

 

              Kagome woke to the soothing sensation of a warm hand rubbing slow circles on her back. She blinked her eyes open to the familiar setting of Sesshoumaru’s bedroom. She turned her head a little and met Sesshoumaru’s concerned gaze. “You’re home,” she breathed, contentedness bringing color to her cheeks.

              “And you have gotten yourself into trouble again,” he murmured, voice gentle to soften the blow.

              She remembered suddenly, the events of the night before, and all at once went pale. The man—with a  _baby_ —! She rocketed upright, and he wrapped his arms around her to prevent her from fleeing.

              “All is well,” he cooed into her ear, still stroking her back. He chuckled then, and added, “except perhaps for Tanaka’s shoes.”

              Kagome peered up at him from where he had her squished to his chest. “… His arm? The baby?”

              “Mother and child left the building before you lost control. The arm will grow back eventually.”

              Not much consolation, but the best she could expect from him.

              She burrowed into him. “I feel awful.”

              He pulled away just enough to indicate a plastic bucket on the bed behind her. “I have procured a basin.”

              “No, I mean,” she paused and released a little mirthful giggle at his misunderstanding before sobering once more. “I mean I feel awful about what happened. I didn’t realize how out of hand things had gotten. How I was affecting those around me.”

              His hand slowed its pace and trailed to her shoulder. Gently, he put a little distance between them, so that they might see each other fully. “The fault is mine. My guidance was insufficient. You are Miko, you cannot help your nature.”

              Again, her chest felt tight. “What is that supposed to mean?” Her voice was soft, but her eyes sparkled with indignance.

              “Did I not describe the incompetent self-righteousness inherent to Miko before?”

              He had, when describing Rin to her, ages ago. But the flippant comment felt like a backhand to the face.

              “Though you are not like the rest of your kind, precisely. Rather than incompetent, you are merely clumsy. Not self-righteous but naïve…?” This explanation, no less hurtful, seemed to satisfy him, and he touched her cheek with an indulgent hand. “But you have outdone your predecessors in every other way, and will surpass them in this respect as well.” He leaned forward and nuzzled her affectionately.

              His nose against her neck tickled her, and she loosened the tension in her jaw.  _It’s a cultural difference_ , she reminded herself, realizing that this was his version of kindness, of comforting. Releasing her anger, she put her hand on top of his head and ran her fingers through his hair. She’d discuss it with Murasaki-sensei, though.

              “For the time being,” Sesshoumaru intoned, lips still tantalizingly close to her ear, “you will curtail your training. Allow me some time to discover how best to assist you.”

              She wasn’t quite content with the authoritativeness he was displaying, but she accepted it, again, for what it was: his way of protecting her. The gentle, lingering kiss he planted on her lips went a long way in placating her dissatisfaction.

             

              It turned out that the ban on her training didn’t last longer than two weeks before it was lifted.

             

              Kagome, lounging on Sesshoumaru’s couch as he showered not 10 days later, had been idling her time away browsing through news articles on her phone, when she received a call from a masked number. She considered letting the call go to voicemail, but habitual politeness won out and she answered instead.

              “Higurashi speaking,” she murmured.

              There was a moment of static, and then a woman’s soft voice filtered through the line. “Hello, yes, my name is Ikami Akane. I am trying to reach a Higurashi Kagome-san; is she available?” Soft, but crisp. Businesslike.

              “Speaking.”

               “Do you have a moment to talk, Higurashi-san?”

              Sesshoumaru had just gotten into the bathroom; she had time. She murmured appropriately.

              “As I said, I am Ikami Akane, from Ikami shrine. We’re located in a small village outside of Tsurui, in Hokkaido.” Kagome made a mental memo to google the city name later [1]. “Word has a way of travelling within our community,” she explained, “and word has reached me about  _you_. I understand that you made a visit to Himi shrine, somewhat recently?”

              Himi Shrine [2]. Kagome shuddered, thinking of the antipathy in Himi-san’s eyes, the way that she had ignored Ichiro and maligned Yura-san and Sesshoumaru. Kagome’s voice might have been a little cold when she replied, “I did,” but who could blame her for being suspicious?

              Ikami-san’s laugh, light and lilting, disarmed Kagome immediately. “No need to worry. I heard tell of what happened, I’m guessing it may have been an embroidered tale, but I am firmly on your side. Himi has some old and unfortunately common ideas about what Miko should be, and how they should view youkai. But I, like you, see things a little differently.” She paused. “Through my husband,” her voice was a little more hesitant now – testing – “I heard about an incident earlier this month, in which someone was hurt as a result of your practice?”

              Kagome sucked in a breath. The man’s black, crumbling limb flashed before her mind’s eye. “Yes,” she replied, voice a thread whisper.

              “My husband assures me that the family is all well – they’ve settled in not too far from here, actually. Personally, I find it ridiculous for them to have come all this way, but if it had been one of my children I suppose I might have panicked as well.”

              “Your children?” Kagome mumbled, train of thought still looping on the man’s arm.

              “Yes—hanyou.”

_What?_

              “I heard that you called the youkai your friends, when you left Himi Shrine.”

              “Because they  _are_ ,” Kagome protested, still defensive when recalling that encounter.

              “I would like to offer my assistance to you, if I may. I am not a Miko myself, though I grew up in a shrine family, and I haven’t any reiki to speak of either, but I have had a hand in training my children to manage their youki, with great success. I figure, those of us out there that view the world the way we do ought to stick together, and I think that maybe I can help you.”

              “I’m—” She wasn’t sure what to say. Hanyou children? And—and…

              “Do you need time?” Ikami-san asked, soothing.

              “ _No_ ,” Kagome ejaculated, feeling as though she were overflowing with feelings just at the moment. “I would love your help, if you’re willing to give it. It’s so kind of you to reach out like this… I’m just a little overwhelmed.” She paused. “It’s so… out of the blue.”

              Ikami’s tinkling laugh came through the receiver once more. “I’m glad. I’ll be going down to Tokyo at the weekend, where I’ll be staying with my sister for a month or so. Tenya and the children will be on their annual retreat, you know, with their community. Perhaps we might arrange to meet on Sunday?”

              After settling all the logistics, Kagome hung up the phone and fell back into the couch, eyes wide with surprise and excitement. Sesshoumaru joined her then. She didn’t bother to ask if he had heard. Of course he had. “What do you think?” She asked, voice sparkling with pleasure.

              The slight thinning of his lips dimmed her joy a little. “Did I not ask you to leave it to me?”

              “Don’t pout,” she giggled, brightening again.

              He settled his hand on top of her head and ruffled her hair. “Perhaps this is indeed fortunate,” he conceded, sitting down beside her. “Though you will allow me to attend your first meeting, just the same.”

             

             

              Sesshoumaru’s hand between her shoulder-blades steered her through the small restaurant toward the back, where a young man in a black suit and bowtie ushered them through a door, then a narrow hallway, into a small, private dining room. After the din of the restaurant’s main room – people talking, silverware clicking and glasses clinking – and the racket as they passed the kitchen, this small room felt unnaturally quiet, unnaturally still.

               “I will return shortly with some water and to bring your guest when she arrives. Should you need anything, please press this button here,” the young man said, indicating a silver button flush with the table-top. “Excuse me.”

              The dining room door, Kagome noticed as he closed it, was quite thick, a good four inches at least. She glanced questioningly at her dinner partner. “The room is warded and insulated,” he explained. “No sound or energy can penetrate these walls. Everything that occurs in here is private – secret.”

              Kagome nodded absently in understanding before looking down at herself, outfitted in her usual clothing. “I still feel underdressed.” Sesshoumaru didn’t dignify this with a response. “I’m a little nervous,” she sighed, fidgeting, before pulling out her chair to sit down.

              “There is no call for concern,” he intoned, settling down beside her and draping an arm casually across her shoulders. “If she tries anything untoward I will end her.”

              She looked at him askance, saw the seriousness in his eyes, and laughed a little. She shook her head. “Please don’t do that unless she makes an obvious attempt on my life.”

              His grunt disappeared under the sound of a doorbell ringing, and then the door opened once more. The black-suited young man ushered in a middle-aged woman, with a rounded face and light crinkling about the eyes, dark hair cropped in a neat little bob. Kagome stood at once but said nothing until the – was he a waiter? – deposited three glasses of water onto the table, excused himself once more, and left the room.

              “Ikami-san,” she greeted, bowing a little, and the older lady returned the gesture. Her dark eyes shifted to the youkai seated at the table, then back to Kagome’s questioningly. “This is my – er… friend, Sesshoumaru; I’m sorry I didn’t let you know beforehand that he’d be coming, it was a last-minute change of plans.” Blatant lie, but he had told her to say nothing about his coming along. “Please, have a seat.”

              After a brief bow, and neatly hanging a lovely leather tote off the back of her chair, Ikami Akane seated herself across from them, primly folding her hands together on the tabletop before her. She looked at Sesshoumaru for a long moment, her face friendly but otherwise closed, before turning to Kagome. “A pleasure to meet you. Somehow I had pictured you differently.”

              Kagome blushed, unsure if this was a complement. “I pictured you differently too,” she admitted, before biting down on her lip.

              “I’m often told my voice sounds quite youthful over the phone,” she said, smiling gently to ease Kagome’s discomfort. Ikami-san couldn’t be more than her mid-fifties, Kagome was certain. She tilted her head a little, inspecting Sesshoumaru again unhurriedly. “Sesshoumaru-sama,” she murmured, bowing a little in her seat. “My husband Tenya would no doubt send his regards.”

              “Hn,” was his unblinking response.

              “Now, dear,” Ikami continued, unperturbed, “tell me how you’ve been managing so far.”

              So Kagome explained. About her run-in with Kagura, where she had first experienced her reiki, to the death of Naraku; how Sesshoumaru had provided her with some literature, which she had been using as a guide. How, though her power felt as though it had been growing exponentially since her death and revival, the task of controlling this strength felt like an increasingly impossible task, and that every step forward was followed by three backward.

              She spoke at length, and neither of the two others in the room interrupted her in any way, allowing her to unburden herself in a way that she was quite unused to doing, even in Murasaki-sensei’s office.

              After all of this, Kagome was surprised that the first voice raised was not Ikami-san’s, but Sesshoumaru’s, that what he said had nothing in the least to do with Kagome’s monologue, and that it wasn’t even directed at her at all. “What ages are your hanyou children?”

              If she was startled by this abrupt change in topic, Ikami didn’t show it. She answered simply. “The elder is one hundred and forty six, and the younger has just turned eighty.”

              Kagome blinked.

              Sesshoumaru said nothing, merely stared.

              Though Ikami’s composure was laudable,  _nobody_  was immune to that stare. She capitulated after several seconds had passed, adding, reluctantly, “…They are, of course, my step-children.”

              “Oh.” Kagome looked between them, fascinated.

              “Tenya had two human wives before me,” she went on, hesitatingly, still subject to Sesshoumaru’s icy stare-down. “Hanyou children,” she explained, effortfully moving her gaze to Kagome’s openly interested face, “appear to age like humans do—adult-sized bodies, intellect and so forth, by the age of twenty, and from that point continue to age at a far slower rate, but they reach their… er, maturity at a pace comparable to youkai. Which is to say, a twenty year old hanyou would be similar to a human adult psychologically and physically, but in terms of youkai strength, similar to a newly born youkai infant, if you see what I mean?”

              Kagome nodded absently, suddenly realizing she had no idea how old Sesshoumaru was. Another, much darker thought followed that one, but she shoved it down deep for later reflection. She had to focus on the current discussion. “So, your sons…?”

              “Yes, Touki is just eighty, and appears to be an adult, though he is just now beginning to struggle with the control of his youkai side. He will have long outlived me before he can master it.”

              A silence fell then, filled by the soft buzzing of the Edison bulbs in the pretty chandelier hanging over the lacquered wood table.

              “That is a discussion for another time, of course,” Ikami said, laying her palms flat on the tabletop. “You mentioned that you have been working from a text? Did you happen to bring it with you?”

              Kagome shook her head. “I wasn’t sure how this conversation would go,” she explained, cheeks burning with her embarrassment. How rude she must sound!

              “That’s alright, dear,” Ikami appeared unsurprised. She shifted her gaze to Sesshoumaru and back before adding, questioningly, “you must be the recipient of some good advice…?”

              Sesshoumaru’s hand covering hers stilled Kagome’s lips, her voice dying in her throat. He stared hard at Ikami for a while before taking a breath in to speak. His voice was smooth and low, with a dangerous edge to it; the voice he used when he was  _himself_ , and it made Kagome’s stomach flip-flop hearing it come out of the more human version of his face. “You will have surmised that Higurashi is under my protection.”

              Ikami nodded slightly, eyes wide in her soft face.

              “Your situation here in Tokyo is transient, I understand?” He asked, lids drooping slightly, expression becoming blander by the second. “Make whatever arrangements you must with your family. You are to remain until such a time as your assistance is no longer needed.”

              Kagome opened her mouth once more to speak, but his hand tightened around hers and she thought better of it. It was odd to her that Sesshoumaru would accept Ikami without her having gone into any detail as to how she had helped her step-sons, the only credentials that should matter – but perhaps he knew who she was. He seemed to have recognized her husband’s name, at the very least. It also perplexed her that he was being so high-handed with Ikami-san, throwing his weight around like this. But Ikami seemed to accept it, or even expect it, so Kagome played along and controlled the reproach that was so eager to burst from her mouth.

              “Of course, Sesshoumaru-sama,” Ikami murmured, bowing her head once more.

              He leaned back, like an emperor in his throne, apparently contented, and bestowed upon them the honor of his “hn” in reply, gently untangling his fingers from hers.

              A brief silence filled the room, during which Kagome studiously avoided the gaze of the others in the room, opting instead to peer at an abstract floral painting on the opposite wall. She wasn’t sure what was going on – some odd dynamics that she didn’t understand, between Sesshoumaru and Ikami, and she had gotten caught up in it as well.

              “You have all of March before classes resume, but bear in mind that as a graduate student, despite the break, Kagome has commitments at her University,” Sesshoumaru’s low voice added at length, vibrating through the quiet. She wondered if he used her given name intentionally, or if it had been a slip of the tongue. Glancing at his features, it was impossible to tell. “See to it that whatever schedule you decide on does not interfere with her academics. She has, I hear,” his eyes slid sideways to meet hers, gold and glimmering with some secret joke, “so much potential.”

              Those had been Ueda-sensei’s words, when he’d cautioned her about her relationship with Sesshoumaru, hadn’t they?

              Puzzled, Kagome blinked, wondering where the humor was in that. “At any rate, I’ll be in your care, Ikami-san,” she said at length, directing a friendly smile at the older lady.

              Ikami murmured suitably and folded her hands together in her lap once more.

              The next ten minutes were spent discussing logistics; that settled, Ikami excused herself, leaving the two of the in the still little room. She turned her face up to Sesshoumaru to find his thoughtful eyes on her. Neither of them spoke; he leaned in and planted a soft kiss on her forehead.

              “Shall we?”

              Somehow the air felt different when they left the shut-up meeting chamber. Granted it smelled like a restaurant and sounded like one too, full of the early-evening buzz of people talking and eating, and the shuffling back and forth of the waitstaff. But having left the insulated meeting room behind, Kagome felt a little breathless, light-headed.

              Sesshoumaru wound his arm unselfconsciously around her shoulder, and she leaned against his side for a moment before they resumed their path to the exit. His car was in front of the building, engine running, the man with the bow-tie who had ushered them in waiting for them beside the open driver’s door.

              “I hope our service has not been lacking today, Sesshoumaru-sama,” he said in his well-modulated voice, torso at a precise forty-degree angle.

              “This Sesshoumaru has been satisfied,” he intoned loftily, as though conferring a favor. Kagome watched all of this, stunned. Bow-tie Man bowed lower, expressed his thanks in the most obsequious tones he had managed thus far.

              Myouga-sensei had a penchant for being ingratiating, and Yura-san had always been deferential and respectful toward Sesshoumaru, but  _this_ … And Sesshoumaru! Behaving like some kind of Lord, descending from on high!

              Kagome thanked the young man who had opened her car door, and he closed it gently behind her. Her gaze had already drifted to the driver’s side, however, to mull over Sesshoumaru’s bland, slightly amused expression. He glanced at her before turning his eyes back to the road and pulling away from the curb, lips slowly twitching upward.

              “I can hear your thoughts,” he said, eliciting a scoff in response.

              “Seems like there’s some things you ought to have told me about yourself…?” she suggested, voice mild.

              “That may be so,” he conceded, equally mild.

              “Well?”

              He glanced at her again, expression indulgent. “Another time, perhaps.”

 

-+-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN for Act I: I mean. A lot in there. And a lot of feelings. But like, they have to boink too, right? That’s a lot of words that add nothing to the plot!! What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts on where things are going!  
> Footnotes:  
> [1] Tsurui: I admit I’ve never been there, but wanted to! Tsurui is a breeding ground for the red-crowned crane, one of the 100 Soundscapes of Japan (these are places meant to promote the rediscovery of the sounds of everyday life: another fun one is the cicada sounds at Yama-Dera, in Yamagata!)  
> [2] Himi Shrine: In Omikuji, Kagome visited Himi Shrine to seek help with reiki control, and had a very cold, mean reception, made worse by Sesshoumaru’s meddling.


	5. Act I, Part V: Studies

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**Han-Kichi : An Omikuji Epilogue**

Act One

In Five Parts

 

-+-

V

学問 Studies: You will learn even what you did not desire to know.

 

              Kagome collapsed into her couch, exhaling a shuddering breath. Her fingers uncurled from around her phone, the screen still lit, displaying Ueda-sensei’s email. After another shaky breath, Kagome brought the screen up to her line of sight and read it again.

               _Perhaps we ought to conceptualize a different topic._

She sighed, feeling clammy with her disappointment, and let the phone drop into her lap once more. He had said there would be a lot of red marks in her future, but to suggest that she scrap her dissertation topic… that was definitely not the type of feedback she had been expecting. She would have to rearrange her schedule with Ikami-san for the next weeks, to allow for more research and writing time.  _Ugh_.

              As it was, she wouldn’t have long to wait; Ikami-san was due to pick her up in about fifteen minutes, and they would carpool to Higurashi shrine as they had been doing nearly daily. Her mother had asked her why she didn’t just stay at home, in lieu of the frequent commute. Kagome had answered that she wanted to be close to campus to work on her paper. That was true, of course. But really, she wanted to be close to Sesshoumaru. They didn’t get a chance to meet as often as she might like – every day would be ideal – so she wanted to be as available as she could manage.

              But the shrine was working out as an excellent place to train. Naturally, youkai avoided the grounds, and hanging up wards around their practice space was met with no suspicion at all. By the time Kagome had managed to organize her thoughts, her phone vibrated with Ikami-san’s message, and she made her way down to meet her.

              “Good morning,” Kagome murmured, barely hearing Ikami’s response in kind as she settled into the worn fabric of the passenger seat, phone buzzing in her hand. Kagome looked down to her screen and pinkened upon reading the message.

               _These past four days have seemed eternal. I’m home. Come over directly when you have finished._

              Ikami, glancing at Kagome briefly, saw the pleasure in her face. “Sesshoumaru-sama?” she asked, and the deepening of Kagome’s blush was answer enough. “I must confess, I find myself surprised at the attention he pays you.”

              Kagome startled a little at this. They hadn’t talked about Sesshoumaru nearly at all since they first began meeting, and anything that  _had_  been said was no more than a cursory comment or the request of conveyance of a greeting on her behalf. “I don’t blame you, I guess,” Kagome offered, turning her eyes out the window to study the passing scenery. Barren trees, slowly beginning to show the color of their bulbs despite the frosty day.

              “I don’t mean to intrude where I’m not wanted,” Ikami-san murmured, tone inquiring, “but I confess that I have some concerns.”            

              A soft sigh escaped her lips. “If it’ll make you feel better to express them, I don’t mind hearing them,” she offered. It was probably the same concerns she had herself.

              Ikami drove in silence for several minutes, chewing her lower lip, eyes on the road but thoughts apparently elsewhere. “Do you know much about his past, my dear? Or even his present? I have been under the impression that you are not quite clear as to his position.”

              “Well, you’re not wrong. I know  _how_  he is better than  _who_  he is. To everyone else at least.” She counted herself lucky that she even knew  _that_  much. His “another time, perhaps” had never materialized, and every time she had tried to raise the subject of his past and position in life, he had sidestepped her.

              “I might tell you a little about him, then,” Ikami suggested, voice light, the matter settled. “Has he made you any offers? Promises?”

              Kagome colored prettily and shook her head, following it with a choked “no”. She gathered her wits together enough to tack on, “we’re sort of playing things by ear.”

              But of course, she wondered how true that really was.

              Sesshoumaru was affectionate with her – at home as well as when they were out, even in front of their mutual acquaintances. Excepting, of course, when they were on campus and not in his office behind a closed door. He spoiled her with caresses and closeness, though he wasn’t much of a talker. After his initial assurances that he was willing to see where things led with her, and that his interest was more than a passing fancy, though, he had little to say on the topic. And there were times, at night, when she awoke to catch him sitting up in bed beside her, eyes on the moon outside the window, lost in thought, where she wondered…

              “Youkai and human relations are complex enough without throwing romance into the bargain,” Ikami said, tapping her thumbs on her steering wheel. “Tenya remained with each of his previous wives until the moment they left this world, and mourned each of them despairingly. But he is an unusual example.”

              “My cousin has a thing with a youkai,” Kagome offered, thinking of Yura and Ichiro, and the delightful way they looked at each other. “I don’t know if any… promises?... have been made there either, though.”

              “They’re not likely to,” Ikami murmured. “Youkai and humans rarely mix.”

              “I’m surrounded by outliers, then,” Kagome scoffed. Ichiro and Yura, she and Kouga when she was younger, she and Sesshoumaru, and now Ikami and her husband. It seemed like a lot.

              “Yes,” she replied, “you are in an unusual set of circumstances, Kagome-san.” They drove in silence the rest of the way.

              They worked hard that afternoon. Ikami-san, despite not having access to the spiritual energy that Sesshoumaru’s father’s texts insisted were as innate to humans as youki to youkai, had an excellent grasp of how it worked, endless patience, and an encouraging manner of instruction. She had explained at great length and with precise detail how she had managed to assist her half-demon step-sons with controlling their newly burgeoning youki, and some of the techniques she had worked on with them were becoming useful to Kagome as well.

              “How come  _you_  were in charge of that?” Kagome asked, once. “Shouldn’t your husband or another youkai in the family have been the one to help them?”

              And so Ikami explained. That as a human wife to a youkai, she had been shunned by the youkai community. That Tenya had managed while the boys were young, because they were easily ignored and not allowed to be underfoot, but now that they were older and beginning to display their paternal characteristics, were reviled. And that, unwilling to rock the boat with his tenuous social connections, he had separated himself from his wife and children, even though they were his children and not hers. Their yearly trip was the one concession, where he and his sons would commune with the wild, though separated from the rest of their youkai family. “We’re still in touch,” Ikami added, voice steady, “and he visits. But circumstances have forced us to be secretive about it.”

              Kagome found the whole thing appalling and wondered how on earth Ikami could be so accepting of the fact, and so progressive, when her treatment by the youkai community had been abysmal and would lead any less warm-hearted person to fester in resentment rather than seek reconciliation.

              Over tea that evening, Ikami praised Kagome’s progress. They had made great strides – Kagome could call the energy to her hands and put it back away again with little thought. Ikami had introduced interruptions into their training now, to help Kagome maintain her control despite her surroundings. Neither of them ever wanted for the arm-burn incident to repeat itself. But the praise was kept to a minimum, and as they sipped the steaming brew from clay cups almost too hot to hold, the subject from the car came up again.

              “I’m sure you’ve figured out that Sesshoumaru-sama is a youkai of some standing,” Ikami said, to which Kagome nodded, remembering that he had even made it into the history books. “He comes from the most noble family lines,” Ikami went on, “his father was a Daiyoukai, massively powerful and feared and respected. Their territory has been in the West for as long as their house has stood. Now that the world has become as global and mobile as it has, of course, his influence is infinitely more far-reaching. He’s something of a celebrity,” she added on a laugh. “I’d never met him before but the impression I’ve always had of him hasn’t necessarily been flattering.” She sighed.

              “How come?” Kagome sipped her tea without blowing on it first and yelped as she burned her tongue.

              “I always assumed he was one of his generation – deeply rooted in the old ways. He’s  _never_  been known to involve himself in human affairs, or to consort with humans more than strictly necessary. He’s the sort of man that will look down his nose at any being less powerful than he, which includes just about everyone on this earth.”  Now she held her cup to her lips and peered at Kagome over its rim. “With one exception of course.”

              Kagome turned pale and then pink, but kept her lips sealed.

              “I can see why, I think,” Ikami murmured.

              They sat together, for the next two hours, well past the time they usually marked as the end of their day. Ikami-san, in her light, sweet voice, told a tale of the Sesshoumaru of before – the youkai of the past that Kagome had glimpsed for the first time only recently, and who, she was beginning to see, was hiding himself from her in some ways, still.

              Strength was the chosen means by which Sesshoumaru sought conquest over his opponents. He was known to be cunning and patient, terrifyingly intelligent, and quite merciless when crossed. And the power he prized in himself had also been the mark against which he would measure the worth of others, and each and every time they came up lacking.

              “Tenya says that’s why he has never married.”

              “Do youkai even marry…?” Kagome mused.

              “Well – no. Not how we do. No family registers, though lineage is of course incredibly important. No legally binding documents to cement a match. But most do choose a partner with whom to spend their lives, you know, and once this intention has been declared, it’s a matter of honor that it be upheld. His father was married, in the way of youkai, to his mother, though it was not a love match and more of a political alliance uniting their families.”

              It must have been greatly upsetting to Sesshoumaru, Kagome reflected, when his father broke his vow and had another child with a human.

              “The world of youkai is much more violent than ours, you know,” Ikami continued. She explained that out-and-out murder, how Naraku had dealt with Kagura, or Sesshoumaru with Naraku, was not uncommon, or even considered distasteful. “We have an obsession with peace and prolonging life. But youkai acknowledge that death is part and parcel of their existence. Predators hunt and their prey must perish, at some point.”

              Kagome was accepting all of this in good stride, but when Ikami-san informed her that Sesshoumaru had a sword that could kill hundreds of youkai in a single strike, and that he had been known to use it with some frequency, she sucked in a harsh breath. Ikami seemed to sense her discomfort, and changed the topic immediately.

              “It’s getting late,” she said, setting down her half-finished tea. “Let’s go?”

             

 

              Kagome had felt too awkward asking to be dropped off at Sesshoumaru’s building, so when Ikami dropped her off at home, she made the pretense of going through the front door and waited for her to drive away before heading outside to make the short walk to his place. Tanaka-san greeted her as usual, one hand on the button to call the elevator. Kagome glanced down at his perfectly polished leather shoes.

              “I know I said it before, but I’m sorry about your shoes,” she said, gripping the strap of her purse tightly in her hands.

              “Do not concern yourself with that, Higurashi-sama,” he said, eyes sparkling with mirth. “I was happy to be of service to you. My shoes as well.” The elevator door dinged open, and he ushered her inside, hitting the button for the uppermost level for her before stepping back out. “Good evening,” he called, and the door closed him out.

              Tanaka-san, after she’d spewed her guts on him, had been the one to take her up to Sesshoumaru’s apartment, let her in and clean her up before tucking her into bed with a cup of hot tea on the nightstand. He had also been the one to apprise Sesshoumaru of what happened, having put the story together from the bits and pieces that Kagome managed to say while he was with her. He was wonderful, and she adored him.

              The elevator stopped on the top floor and Kagome walked into the small foyer. Sesshoumaru, as usual, had left his door open for her to come in. She returned the borrowed key after her summer internship last year and though he had a key to her place, Sesshoumaru still had not given her one to his. She didn’t make it through the door frame before he was pulling her inside and slamming the door shut behind her.

              The room was dark, the watery glow of a waning moon streaming in through the windows and bathing the room in a calm at odds with the haste of his movements. He hoisted her up into his arms only to toss her bodily onto the couch. “Where have you been?” he asked, nimble fingers unzipping, unbuttoning, unfastening. He glanced up at her briefly, his golden eyes almost luminescent in the moonlight, but did not wait for her reply before resuming his work.

              “Things were going really well, we didn’t want to –  _ahh_ ,” he nipped the side of her neck, “—lose momentum.”

              He made a noise deep in his throat, a grunt, and did not speak again once Kagome’s hands found their way to his skin, having shoved aside the open front of his button-down shirt. She pulled him in closer to her, reaching around his back to grab a fistful of his silken silver strands, yanking his head back gently to return the fevered kisses he had been placing on her neck and sprinkling over his collarbone.

              Another grunt. She felt his hands roving up her inner thighs under her skirt, pushing her panties out of the way, and she pressed down into his seeking hand. She was already wet, infected with the urgency that had him pulling her down against him while they both remained fully clothed. When he was fully seated within her, Kagome reached down and plucked ineffectively at the waistband of her panties—he hadn’t bothered removing them and they were chafing weirdly.

              Sesshoumaru groaned, one hand grasping her hip tightly. She felt him fumbling around and then heard the sound of fabric ripping. The panties, in tatters, flew to the floor. Kagome might be on top, but he was in control. Hands guiding her movement, they ground together, a long low moan escaping her mouth as his thumb applied a careful pressure to her clit. He was nipping at her neck and clavicles, the zipper of his pants biting into her too every time she pressed herself back on him and he rose up to meet her.

              Her end was not long in coming – fingers convulsing where she gripped to his shoulders, insides convulsing where she gripped to his cock, she trembled through her release. He sighed, rocking within her as she rode out her orgasm, before finally tightening his fingers around her hips once more and unseated himself from within her to hoist her up into his arms.

              Kagome wrapped her arms around his neck, relaxing into the princess carry. When he settled her down onto the bed, and proceeded to undress her first and then himself, she felt the rekindling of that internal fire that seemed to perpetually smoulder within her for him.

              He settled down beside her, facing her, and pushed her shoulder gently down to keep her on her back when she reached for him. The hazy yellow streetlight filtering in through the windows illuminated his face as a clawed hand reached up to the crown of her head. A small, tight knot formed in Kagome’s stomach when she saw no answering fire burning in his eyes.

                            “You had a fruitful meeting today, then?” Sesshoumaru murmured, running his fingers through her hair.

“Ikami-san has been so great,” Kagome answered around her confusion.

              Minutes passed, in which the silence between them was filled by the sounds of Sesshoumaru’s fingers carding through her hair, and the smooth rhythm of their breathing.  _He didn’t finish_ , Kagome concluded at length,  _but I guess we’re done_. The knot in her belly twisted. Eventually, despite his calming caresses, she couldn’t sit still with her discontentment. “We talked a little about her family situation today, you know. And about youkai-human romance.”

“Hn.”

She really hadn’t expected any other answer than that, but it disappointed nonetheless. “She’s been through a lot, and especially because of her kids, I guess. And Tenya-san too. It must take an extraordinary character to be willing to be in a relationship where they know they will lose their partner. And three times!” He said nothing, and his fingers continued their steady combing of her black tresses.  _He really has nothing to say about it, huh?_  All of a sudden, her impetuous mouth started moving on its own, vocalizing the dark thought that had rooted itself deep within her when she first met Ikami and heard her story, and Kagome was powerless to stop it, even knowing that there could be no result where she didn’t end up hurt because of it. “ _You_  wouldn’t… would you?”

              Now his ministrations stopped, as he drew his hand away from her. “Three times, or do you mean ‘even once’? I confess your mortality has weighed heavily on my mind. That is what you really wanted to know, is it not?”

              Kagome tore her gaze from the ceiling above them, looking at the low-lidded golden eyes that stared at her, glowing slightly in the shadow. She hadn’t meant to get into a  _discussion_ , but it seemed he was going to be cooperative, at least. “I just feel like you’ve been keeping me at arm’s length,” she managed.

              “As indeed I have.”

              Kagome flinched.  _He’s being honest_ , she reminded herself.  _Cultural differences. He’s participating, he’s not **trying**  to hurt me. _Murasaki-sensei’s sweet, low voice echoed in her head, reminding her to breathe. She did, a long breath in and out, ignoring Sesshoumaru’s observant eyes on her. Then, in a whisper, she managed to ask, “would you tell me why?”

              He sighed, the brilliant gold of his irises disappearing behind magenta-streaked lids as they pressed closed for a fraction of a moment. “However much I may desire it not to be so, it is inevitable that you will predecease me in what to a youkai would feel like the blink of an eye. Humans, further, are not known to be long-lived in their affections,” he paused, reaching out and touching her shoulder. “I am content to be beside you, to share in your life, however, I am not as yet certain that I am able to share mine.”

              “Oh,” said Kagome, voice small, cheeks flooded with color, eyes stinging a little. “I need to think about that a little,” came the words, around a growing lump in her throat. “Can we talk about this more later?”

              He said nothing but moved his hand from her shoulder back to her hair, resuming his calming caress.

              That was close enough to a yes for her. Her gaze shifted to the ceiling, and when it got too blurry for her to see anymore, she closed her eyes.

 

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN for Act I: I mean. A lot in there. And a lot of feelings. But like, they have to boink too, right? That’s a lot of words that add nothing to the plot!! What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts on where things are going!


	6. Act II, Part I: Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: TW for discussions of mortality, illness, and angst in this Act, duders.

-+-

 

**Han-Kichi : An Omikuji Epilogue**

Act Two

In Three Parts

 

-+-

I

恋愛 Love: Your challenge will meet with failure.

             

              Sango’s impending move-out, of course, raised the question of what Kagome would do once the lease was up. She couldn’t afford the 2 bedroom apartment on her own and hadn’t been successful searching for a roommate, so the matter was settled that the two of them would vacate the apartment together at the end of March. The secret, sly part of Kagome wanted to mention the living situation to Sesshoumaru, to see if he might offer to do something about it for her, but the conversation they’d had while shadowed in moonlight about his reservations about their relationship made her bury that impulse down deep.

              She ended up leasing a studio in the same building, on the same floor, a little further down the hall. No proper bedroom, but her overall rent payment would go down enough to make the loss of space bearable. March ended, and with it her lease in her shared apartment, and April began with her brother and a handful of his friends helping her relocate all of her worldly possessions into the coat-closet she’d now be living in.

              It didn’t take more than a few hours’ work between the four of them, but she still had to shell out for CoCo Curry delivery and beer for five [1], which decimated her discretionary spending budget for the month. It hadn’t helped that it was an unse­­­­asonably warm day, so their antics had been exponentially more exasperating. Souta’s friends left immediately once paid and fed, but her annoying little brother stayed behind to help her unpack.

              “So, uh…”

              Kagome looked down from where she was putting dishes away into the overhead cabinet in her little kitchen. “What’s up, squirt?” She sniffled.

              “Sick again?”

              She’d had what looked like a cold on and off the last few weeks, and every time it seemed to be getting better it would get worse again, but she was sure that this wasn’t that. “No, it’s all this dust! What is it?”

              Souta glanced at her before returning to his work shelving her books. “You still dating that guy you brought around for New Year’s?”

              The bit of his ear that she could see from where she balanced on her office chair was bright red. She giggled, delighting in how awkward he must be feeling. “Is that something  _you_  want to know, or something  _Mom_  wants to know?”

              A sneaky grin pulled his cheeks up, but he kept his face resolutely forward and continued on his work. “A bit of both, I guess.”

              “We’re still dating, yeah,” she said, her tongue fumbling clumsily around the verb. Were they  _dating_? They were  _together_ , at least; exclusive. But they weren’t, like, going places and doing things, really. Outside of his apartment, anyway. Or lunch once a month on average.

              “So how come he didn’t come help you move?” he asked, and when his sister was quiet, turned to face her and added awkwardly, “I mean, I would’ve at least liked to meet the guy. It’s been what? Like four months?”

              Slowly, Kagome lowered herself from the office chair to the floor. Her nose was pink and she rubbed at it absently with the back of her hand. After a long moment, she took the three steps necessary to cross to where Souta sat, and settled herself beside him, leaning against the wall by the bookshelf. “Right around four, yeah,” she sighed. “I didn’t tell him I was moving.”

              “What?” Souta’s brown eyes were squinting at her under his furrowed brow, alternately surprised and suspicious.

              “It’s just, we’ve only been together for a short time, and I didn’t want to mention the move in case it made it seem like I was… you know…  _angling_. Like asking him to move in together.”

              He seemed to accept that and sat back on his haunches a little, though his eyes were still fixed on her face. “But you could have told him you’d picked a place to move  _on your own_  and asked for a hand, without coming off like that, right?”

              She shut her eyes and sighed again.

              “You don’t seem like this relationship is making you happy, sis.” Souta said, setting down the book in his hands, giving up all pretense of still working.

              “It’s not that I’m unhappy,” she corrected him gently, reaching out and ruffling his hair a little, ignoring his hand as it batted hers away. “We’re at one of those stages in a relationship, you know? Where we’re negotiating around how far things are gonna go, how invested we are in things. It’s obvious that we care about each other. It’s just that right now, it feels like I’m more committed than he is. I mean, I guess it’s always sort of felt that way.” She blinked and her gaze skittered to the side, recalling the months they had danced around each other, and how all that changed once he’d brought her back to life.

              And therein lay the problem, didn’t it?

              He’d seen her die once already.

              He was excruciatingly aware of her mortality.

              How could you open up to someone when all you could think of was their imminent end?

              “That’s kind of fucked up, isn’t it?” Souta asked, lips thinning, pressed into an angry line. “You shouldn’t be with someone if there’s that kind of imbalance.”

              Kagome’s answering chuckle was bitter, soft. “It’s not an imbalance of  _feeling_ , though.” At least she hoped not. “He’s just got some baggage to work through.”

              “At your expense?” Kagome cut him a look and he crossed his arms in a gesture of petulance she hadn’t seen for a long time. “Excuse me if I think my sister is worth more than that.”

              “Thanks, brat,” Kagome colored, appreciative and a little bashful all at once. “You want another beer?”

              By the time Souta left, the majority of Kagome’s belongings had been put away and organized, and she had made herself cozy in the middle of her bed, legs crossed, ready. Her phone was in her lap, screen dark; her fingers loosely twisted together over her heart. A little cough propelled its way from her throat as she brainstormed through the text message she composed in her mind.

              As her hand reached out to her phone, it began to ring; he had an uncanny knack for calling just as she was thinking of him this way. She cleared her throat and answered with a susurration of his name.

              “I have a few hours,” he intoned, something like benevolence ringing in his voice. There must be someone with him — he only ever sounded so lofty when he wore his mask of superiority, when there was somebody, a youkai, around. “Expect me to arrive momentarily.”

              “U-um,” Kagome sat up straighter, feeling all of the awkwardness of this situation descending upon her immediately. “You’ll have to come to the apartment three doors down on the left.”

              “Are you  _occupied_?” He sounded taken entirely aback, assuming she was visiting, and apparently finding the thought of her spending time with her neighbors to be something abhorrent.

              “No — I’ve just moved.”

              “Expect me shortly.” And with that, he hung up.

              A quick once-over of her apartment showed it to be acceptable enough for  _his eminent company_ , but she popped the window open further and turned on her fan to try and rid the room of whatever sweaty teenage boy smells she was sure remained, and tied off the recycling bags with the emptied and washed beer bottles and curry containers, before shuffling down the hall and tossing them down the appropriate chutes. For just a moment she considered trying to do something about her appearance — corralling the flyaways back into her ponytail or changing into a shirt she hadn’t been sweating in all day, maybe — but then she remembered that he’d already seen her dead once, so a little disarray could hardly mean much to him.

              Or was that the wrong attitude to be taking? Should she be worrying more about it? Trying to seem  _less_  mortal?

              It was on this perplexing thought that a knock sounded at her door.

              Sesshoumaru, elegant but dressed down in navy blue blazer and khaki slacks, swept into the room the moment the door was unlatched. His gaze was assessing, his gait predatory as he traversed from one side of the room to the next, into the corner that housed the “kitchen” — no more than two feet of counter space and one upper and two lower cabinets upon which sat a small sink — before poking his head into her bathroom.

              He whirled about and looked at her, long and silently.

              His eyes contained multitudes.

              “I know it’s not quite as nice as the one we had down the hall,” Kagome began, hands aloft in a placating gesture, tone conciliatory, but he cut her off immediately.

              “This would not be fit space in which to house a  _dog_ ,” he bit out. “Why did you keep this from me?”

              Kagome’s lips thinned. Somewhere during his prowling, his human face had melted away, and though she usually delighted in the vivid gold of his natural eye color, when he was like this it was glitteringly cold, and chilled her in turn. She sat at the edge of her bed, and he pulled her chair away from the desk to sit down across from her.

              “What if I  _had_ told you?” she asked. “What would you have done?”

              “I could have helped you find acceptable accommodations,” he answered, as though it were obvious.

              Modulating her speech to be as patient as she could manage, she pressed, “would I have been able to afford what you consider ‘acceptable’, Sesshoumaru?”

              “That is hardly—”

              “My stipend only stretches so far,” she cut in, and the interruption was so unusual for her that he was lost to words long enough for her to continue, “and we’re not in the kind of relationship where I’d let you pay my rent. This isn’t compensated dating.” [2]

              There was a cold fury in his eyes, though his voice was placid enough. “I could have helped you to find a roommate.”

              Kagome sucked in a breath, but it went down wrong and got caught in her throat. Her face turned red and she coughed, and coughed, and gasped for air before coughing again. Sesshoumaru moved next to her on the bed, one hand patting her back, the other coming up to touch her forehead gently. When she settled finally, he pulled her closer to him, tucking her into his side, and scooted them back on the bed until they leaned against the wall together.

              “You are retaliating,” he pronounced eventually, nose buried in the crown of her hair. “You are attempting to push me away, to keep me at arms’ length.”

              A shuddering sigh escaped her and she burrowed in closer to him. “Not retaliating. Taking a page from your book, though, trying to spare myself some pain, I guess.”

              Silence fell between them, the only noises from the fan and the road noise filtering in from the open window. His body, ever like a furnace beside hers, in combination with the warmth rolling in on the late spring breeze, wrapped around her like a blanket. She found herself drowsing.

              “You have a small fever,” Sesshoumaru mumbled into her hair, fingers raking gently against her scalp. “Can I bring you any medicine?”

              “No, it’s fine, it’ll go away if I sleep,” the words came out slurred, spoken directly into his shirt.

              “Will you sleep here tonight?” he asked, claws pausing in their ministrations. “Or will you stay with me?”

              Clammy hands curled into his shirtfront as she hoisted herself closer to him. “Can I come stay with you?”

              Resuming their soft caress just long enough to pull through her hair, his fingers moved up to gently, tenderly grasp her chin. Further she fell into sleep, so that she wasn’t sure if she was dreaming when his warm breath gusted against her cheek, low and gently, as he whispered, “Always.”

             

              Not three days had passed since the argument she and Sesshoumaru had in her apartment, when, from one day to the next, it seemed, the world went from grey-green to soft white and pink. Cherry blossom season had arrived. [3]

              Sango’s text came early in the morning.  _Hey girl. Miroku and I have a great spot for hanami today! Want to come join us?_ By that, she probably meant that  _she_  had a great spot for the cherry blossom viewing, and that Miroku would be joining her later. He wasn’t one for leaving the house early.

              Kagome replied in the affirmative. It was a Saturday, but Ikami-san had cancelled their meeting for the day the night before, as her family would be in town to visit over the weekend, and, Sesshoumaru had some meetings throughout the day.  _Youkai_ business meetings, that were to be conducted under the pretense of viewing the beautiful trees in resplendent bloom.

              With his usual sense of near-psychic timing, Sesshoumaru texted her the very moment she had sent off her agreement to meet with Sango and company.  _Are you available this evening? I would like to take you to see the sakura in bloom._

              If she took a few hours between Sango’s picnic and Sesshoumaru’s to sober up, she was sure she would be fine. With a shrug, she texted him in the affirmative as well, before wrapping herself up in a sweater and scarf — the mornings could still be quite cool — pulling her purse over her shoulder, and locking her apartment up behind her before high-tailing it to the water-side park that Sango had directed her to.

              Though the park itself was still relatively empty for the early hour, picnic blankets laid out and manned by one or two patient individuals awaiting the arrival of the rest of their party, Sango’s was a hive of activity. Miroku spotted her immediately and waved her over before settling back down on the red plush blanket between Sango and Kouga. Kohaku, Sango’s little brother, was to Sango’s left, and a pair of young women holding hands were to Kouga’s right. There was just enough space left for Kagome to sit and close the circle. She toed her shoes off, laid them in a line next to the rest of them, and filled in the gap by Kohaku.

              A chorus of greetings and introductions flew by. Kagome forgot the names of the women next to her nearly immediately, but she leaned over and gave Kohaku a warm hug. He turned bright red. “Still crushing on Kagome-chan, huh, dweeb?” Sango laughed, and the introverted teen blushed even harder while vehemently denying everything. Kagome ignored the whole exchange. Sango ribbed him about  _any_  girl who showed him any attention, poor thing.

              “Beer?” Kouga asked, and when she nodded, made a little gesture to the young lady next to Kagome, who promptly got up to switch seats with him. “Hey,” he said, settling down beside her and handing her a freshly popped can of Asahi Super Dry.

              “Hey, yourself,” Kagome said with a smile, tipping her can to his, taking a sip of her drink, and then leaning back on her forearms. “What a beautiful day!”

              And it was. There was a gentle breeze, picking up scattered cherry blossom petals and lifting them up high into the air, from whence they drifted slowly down like late spring snow. The breeze had that floral, grassy smell that heated you from the inside out, but it was brisk enough to cool the skin warming in the morning sun. And all around them were gnarled trunks and reaching branches dotted with clusters of white and pink blossoms, so ephemeral, and all the more beautiful for it.

              “Unpopular opinion,” Kagome announced, turning a cheeky smile to Kouga, who was eyeing her over the top of his beer. “Plum blossoms are actually prettier than cherry blossoms.”

              “ _Kagome!_ ” Sango burst out, censorious.

              “What?” There was no hiding the laugh in her voice.

              “You can’t  _compare them_. That’s like a mother picking a favorite child. It’s just  _not done_.”

              Now Kouga was laughing too, and Miroku was snickering into the back of his hand. Kohaku, for his part, was hiding his face in his palms, groaning with the shame of having such an older sister.

              Three hours later and four beers in, and having helped decimate the small meal of chicken karaage, onigiri, various pickled vegetables, and the steamed pork buns that Miroku ran off to get half-way through from a close-by  _kombini_ , Kagome wobbled to her feet. “I think I’m gonna go for a walk,” she announced, to everyone and no one at once, sitting back down immediately to put on her shoes, because there was no way she had the balance to do it while standing.

              “I’ll come with you,” Kouga offered, toeing on his shoes beside her.

              “You gonna keep me from falling over into the river?” Kagome asked, stumbling a little as she came to her feet. His hand on her elbow steadied her and he raised a mocking brow. “I’m not that drunk. I’m just naturally clumsy,” she rejoined, as though that were any better.

              He laughed in her face at that, but his fingers released her elbow. “All the more reason for me to keep you from falling into the river.”

              Her harrumph of indignance fell on deaf ears, and she departed from the loudly chattering bunch on the blanket with Kouga trailing quietly a few steps behind her. The breeze picked up, a little cooler now that they were walking by the water, tossing her hair around her face. The happiness welling up within her, from a morning spent in the sunshine with friends, with an evening to look forward to in the company of the youkai she loved… she was shining with happiness.

              “So it turned out I was right about him in the end, I guess?” came Kouga’s voice, a little sheepish, from behind her.

              Kagome cast a small, slightly tight smile over her shoulder at him. “In more ways than one,” she remarked, feeling the bubbling joy recede, pulling away from her extremities the way her reiki did when she reigned it back within her.

              Kouga said nothing but pulled up beside her, matching her step for step, between her and the waterway, eyes fixed firmly forward.

              Several minutes passed with nothing but silence between them, their shoes making soft scuffing noises against the paved walkway. “He’s still being coy, in a way,” she breathed, consciously trying to loosen the tension that was rising, pinching her shoulders up. “We’re together, but he feels distant.”

              “And? Are you still fine with the way it is?” His words were an echo of the words she had spoken to him a scant few months ago, after she had died but before she and Sesshoumaru had begun seeing one another:  _“There’s nothing romantic. And I’m not looking for excuses to get my hopes up,” she had said. “It’s fine the way it is, though.” A pause. “I’m happy.”_

His fingers, gentle on her elbow, pulled her to a stop and turned her slowly to face him. “Are you happy?” he pressed.

              Kagome sucked in a breath and parted her lips to answer, but Kouga released her arm, his own lips firming into a thin line, and resumed his walk. Kagome wasn’t sure exactly what she had been about to say, but apparently that didn’t matter; whatever had been in her eyes in that moment seemed to be answer enough for him.

              The rest of the day passed in a blink, and before she knew it, she was home, sobered up, showered and changed, in a flirty floral sundress with a cropped sweater on top and slipping on a pair of pink ballet flats before following a silent Sesshoumaru out the front door of her apartment. He locked her front door for her before placing a proprietary hand on her back and guiding her down the hall and down the stairs, outside to where his car awaited them.

              The drive was made for the most part in silence, broken only with Kagome’s question of where they were going, which was answered with a gentle puff of air through his nostrils and a sideways glance in her direction. The nonverbal equivalent of ‘wait and see’, she supposed. She just hoped she was adequately dressed. He was looking nice enough, after all; white button-down shirt, charcoal grey blazer and matching suit pants, hair tied in a low ponytail at the nape of his neck.

              An hour later, after a drive into the mountains and up a ways along an unpaved road, Sesshoumaru stopped the car at the bottom of a set of stone stairs, climbing a winding path up into the trees. Kagome, a veteran at stair-climbing, having lived at Higurashi Shrine her entire youth and visiting regularly again now with Ikami-san for the purposes of her training, still wrinkled her nose at the sight of the countless steps with no visible terminal.

              “How many are there?” she asked, readying herself for the inevitable chafe between her thighs after working up a sweat climbing to the top.

              “We will not be walking them,” he replied, humor shining in his golden irises. The sun had disappeared, but the sky was still bright enough for her to see the little quirk of his lips upward as he took in her relief. “Come.” He extended a hand and she stepped closer to take it. Once his fingers entwined with hers, he pulled her body in to his, wrapping his arm tightly around her waist. “You are safe,” he murmured above her ear. “Don’t look down.”

              A tremendous gust of wind blew up from beneath them and Kagome shrieked, one hand pushing her skirt to her legs as her face turned traitorously downward to see where the rush of air had come from, only to find that the ground below their feet was receding, and that a wispy cloud formed beneath their feet was the only thing between them and the rapidly growing distance to the earth.

              She flailed and turned her body toward his, wrapping her arms around him tightly, near hyperventilating with her sudden panic.

              But all of that melted away in the perfect moment when his chest vibrated with the rich sound of his uninhibited laughter, the curtain of his hair shimmering like spun silk in silver in the rising moonlight as it floated on the breeze around them. His brilliant eyes met hers, shining with affection. He tilted his head, encouraging her to turn and appreciate the view, and she moved once more within his hold, though her hands gripped his arm hard enough to bruise a lesser being.

              When Kagome opened her eyes once more, her breath caught in her throat. They were floating suspended in the air, high above the treetops, the yellow haze of the city lights peeking through from the spaces between the mountains in the distance, and directly above them a night sky as dark as she’d ever seen it, pinned up by twinkling bright stars.

              Once her breathing resumed, they began a leisurely pace, climbing up in parallel with the mountain’s slope, heading toward the summit. Kagome’s eyes flitted back and forth, falling on the places lit by a soft blue glow as they illuminated in sequence, mimicking their own progress up the mountainside.

              “Blue flame?” her voice no more than a whisper, would have been lost on the breeze if it had not been Sesshoumaru who stood so warm and safe behind her.

              “Fox fire,” he murmured, continuing their sedate progress toward the summit.

              No more words. The closer they got to the peak, the more the color of the treescape changed, from that green awash with the darkness of the evening, to a softly illuminated pink, brighter and livelier where it concentrated around a small structure that sat lonely atop the crest of the mountain.

              When they landed, Kagome’s hair was all a-tangle though Sesshoumaru’s lay as though he’d just had it done, her nose shone pink from the cool night air, and her eyes sparkled with a joy she was hard-pressed to express. “I’ve never  _flown_  before,” she managed, though her throat was spasming around the emotions that bubbled up within her. Awe. Exultation.

              He shook his head. “You have, once. Yura and Ichiro were with us at the time.”

              The ebullient joy turned into flat dread in the span it took for him to say those twelve words. _So this is how he brought us all back to his house, the night that I_   _died?_

              His hand on her back was comforting as he led her up the cobblestone path to the well-kept but quiet structure. Finally, as they approached, it too lit up in the soft blue glow of the fox fire that burned in the lamps in each of its corners. A gazebo, with a tea table in the middle, and beyond it, on the opposite side from where they stood, the entrance to a gorgeously well-maintained garden, awash with the light from strategically placed lanterns, highlighting a cluster of ancient, beautiful sakura trees in the center.

              “Oh,” Kagome sighed, reaching blindly out to touch her fingertips to Sesshoumaru’s arm in wordless appreciation for the gift he had given her.

              “You like it,” he murmured, covering her fingertips on his arm with his own, pressing his body in toward hers.

              “It’s beautiful.” The words were simple, but there was such insistence in her tone that no one could mistake how deeply affected she was by the sight before her.

              Together they walked the garden, distance between them disappearing progressively as the night chill settled over them at this higher altitude. By the time they neared the center of the garden, winding their way down the path to the small clearing in the midst of the sakura trees, Kagome was near shivering. “Just up ahead,” Sesshoumaru intoned, and they rounded the bend to reveal a traditional Japanese futon surrounded by a canopy of gauzy white curtains, and topped with cushions and coverlets, a small basket off to the side.

              “Oh,” Kagome sighed again, taking in the hidden oasis in the middle of the blossoming sakura trees. She toed off her shoes, flipped them facing outward, and let Sesshoumaru guide her to the center of the futon, where he plucked an afghan from the pile and wrapped it around her shoulders.

              As she settled in, he procured a bottle of sake and two small red cups from the basket, along with what amounted to a more elegant version of the picnic meal she had enjoyed in Sango’s company earlier in the day. He removed each small dish from the hamper and placed it on a low, black-lacquered table at the edge of the futon, along with the two brimming cups of sake. Once the meal was set, Kagome scooted closer to the fare, and he wrapped one arm around her, his free hand reaching to raise his drink.

              The night breeze was cool, and so far from the city, its scent crisp and fresh, but Sesshoumaru’s warmth and cologne filled her senses.

              Alone out here, in this beautiful paradise for two, she felt her heart tremble and burst with the strength of her love for him. A torrent of words rushed up and perched themselves below her chin, wrestling with one another to be the first spoken into the intimate silence that had settled between them. And though the words of love tasted the sweetest in her mouth, her insecurities pushed them back down, deep, deep.

              “Thank you for bringing me here,” she murmured, eventually, touching her fingertips to his knee.

              A sudden gust of wind rustled the branches of the trees around them, flowers and leaves jostling together like the sound of waves crashing on the shore.

              “I have been here before, in less desirable company,” he remarked, “and found myself disappointed. Any place, regardless of its charm, will be rendered unsightly if one’s company is not equal to it,” he said at length.

              Her breath caught in her throat. “How do you find it tonight?”

              Golden eyes like glass flitted down from the blossoms, still dancing above them, to meet her questioning gaze. “Remarkably lovely.”

              As though compelled, Kagome leaned forward and touched her lips, cool from the evening chill and sticky sweet from the sake, to his. He returned her kiss with a delicate, lingering one of his own, before pressing another soft kiss to her forehead, and then one to her hair.

              “Are we… would you call what we’re doing ‘dating’, Sesshoumaru?” she asked from where her nose was pressed to his shoulder.

              She felt more than heard his ‘hn,’ the puff of air warming the top of her head.

              From deep within her throat, a few rebellious words lunged forward and took control of her tongue. “My family wants to meet you.”

              Was it her imagination or did she feel him straighten slightly?

              “Does that… feel like things are moving too fast?”

              He leaned back a little, and waited for her to look at him before answering. “It would be my honor for you to introduce me to your family.”

              She beamed at him, happiness warming her to the tip of her nose. “Maybe over Golden Week?” [4]

              He tucked a lock of hair that was tumbling around in the breeze back behind her ear. “Perhaps before or after? I’m afraid I have some family matters and community gatherings to attend over the course of the holidays.”

              “Oh,” Kagome started. Family matters? “I didn’t realize— I’d thought—”

              “My mother,” his voice had a grudging quality to it, “is still alive and well.”

              Kagome nodded, taking in the way his jaw had tightened at the topic. “I  _know_  Mama will love you,” Kagome said, a soothing hand petting his knee. “Do you think yours will mind me very much…?”

              Sesshoumaru, master though he was of his emotions, could not completely hide the widening of his eyes and slight raising of his brow before he schooled his features to calm once more. But those minute movements, to Kagome’s focused eyes, spoke volumes.

              He had been so totally surprised, because he had not been prepared for her to ask, even with the topic of meeting parents already raised. And he had not been prepared for her to ask, because he had not even considered the idea; it hadn’t been in the realm of possible things for him to consider at all.

              The very moment she began to turn her face away from him, pinching her eyes closed, trying to gather herself together and suppress the sorrow in her heart, she felt a wave of calm rush over her so quickly it seemed almost desperate. Sesshoumaru’s hand around her pulled her in tightly and his youki doubled down,  _calm, calm, calm_ , as he pressed her back to his chest and held her close.

              “Sesshoumaru—” she tried, not knowing quite what to say, but her voice broke a little on the end of his name and her throat closed tightly in rebellion.  _Say no more_ , it protested, convulsing, trying to swallow but not quite managing to.

              He waited a long while, maybe waiting for her to continue, but when she didn’t, eventually he spoke. “You’re warm,” in a lulling tone. “Another fever. Would you like to go back?”

              All she could manage was a nod, before he swept her into his arms and launched them into the sky.

              They were halfway back to the city when Kagome realized he would probably take her to his apartment by default.

              It wasn’t until he turned into their neighborhood that she made up her mind. “You can just drop me off,” she said, sounding just as small as she felt. “I’ll see myself up.”

              She watched his reflection in the glass as he glanced her way, heard his grip tighten on the steering wheel.

 

 

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Act II AN: Not gonna lie, ya’ll, thinking up medical explanations for youkai ailments may have been more fun/work than expected. Did you note the jab at the lazy researcher? I wonder who that could refer to! Also I know it got a little angsty there for a spell but, like, she’s been really sick, and relationships are hard. Especially when you’re with a perfect, possibly eternal being with a totally reasonable fear of commitment.  
> Footnotes:  
> [1] Coco’s and beer: Legal drinking age in Japan is 20 years old. CoCo Curry is a play off Curry House CoCo Ichibanya, which is a chain curry place in Japan that also has a few franchises in the US! Predictably, in California, and in Hawaii. Good stuff!  
> [2] Compensated dating, or enjou kousai, is kind of like a sugar daddy arrangement, in which a (usually) older person will provide expensive gifts or money to a (younger) partner in exchange for companionship or sexual favors. High school kids even have been known to do this!  
> [3] Cherry Blossoms, man, they’re a big deal. If you’re going to do Hanami (花見), the tradition of viewing the cherry blossoms, Japan’s climate varies widely from North to South so the time for it changes depending on your geography. Plan on scouting out a good spot, and staking it out early because competition is TIGHT! A picnic blanket, food and drink (alcohol too!) and good company, and spend a few hours enjoying the beauty of the cherry blossoms. Many parks will have special lighting at night for a different but equally splendid view. It’s a lot of good fun, and it’s really beautiful if you take advantage of it as more than a social occasion!  
> [4] Golden week: Usually begins right at the end of April, this is a week with a cluster of national holidays. Many people use this as a chance to travel! 2019’s is a big deal since there’s an extra holiday with the Emperor scheduled to abdicate the throne on the 30th, so it’s unprecedentedly long.


	7. Act II, Part II: Illness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: TW for discussions of mortality, illness, and angst in this Act, duders.

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**Han-Kichi : An Omikuji Epilogue**

Act Two

In Three Parts

 

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II

病気 Illness: Prepare for a long illness.

              Weeks passed. Hard at work on her coursework and her dissertation besides, or hard at work with Ikami-san in the empty room at Higurashi Shrine, Kagome found she had few free hours to spare. This was a relief, because it gave her an excuse to keep to herself, and she needed the alone time. For his part, Sesshoumaru seemed to understand that he had majorly stuck his foot in it, and respected her need for distance for the first several days before tentatively reinitiating contact via text.

              By the time Golden Week came, they were texting like normal. He apologized that he wouldn’t be able to text ‘much’ (though the frequency barely decreased) and that he wouldn’t be able to call until the week was over. This, she assumed, was his clever way of announcing that he would start calling her again once the holiday passed. She found she was agreeable to it.

              Murasaki-sensei found the time to fit her in for an extra session during the week he was away. With all of the trauma that she was working through, Kagome felt silly taking up extra time on  _relationship advice_ , but Murasaki-sensei reassured her that it wasn’t wasted time. Kagome usually had trouble sleeping, but her nightmares had taken a turn from the grotesque and the life-ending, to the overdramatic and heartbreaking.

              While she was awake, she felt better about things. But while she was asleep…

              Maybe the lack of good rest was getting to her, because the on-again off-again cold and occasional fevers had metamorphosed into something more consistent and much more concerning. Somehow, recently, no matter how hard she concentrated or how hard she worked with Ikami-san, she felt her control over her reiki slipping, like she couldn’t quite handle it anymore. Flashes of memory of the poor youkai with his arm burnt to cinders would compound her anxiety, and whatever fragments of control she had left were slipping away from her, water through a sieve.

              Kagome kicked her feet impatiently, twisting her fingers into the edge of the paper gown. The air in Dr. Satou’s exam rooms was always chilly, and these stupid paper dresses did nothing to keep the body warm. A gentle knock had her sitting straighter, but when the door opened, it wasn’t Dr. Satou that stepped in.

              “Good morning Higurashi-san,” came the sedate cadence of Jinenji’s voice as the nurse let himself into the room. He must have remembered her complaints from when she came last year after the stabbing –  _what a life, that I can just casually refer to ‘the stabbing’!_  – and had a heated blanket for her in one hand, ready to drape over her shoulders.

              “Jinenji-san, you’re my  _hero_ ,” Kagome sighed, clutching the blanket closer around her like a sun-warmed cocoon, but through the congestion in her nose the word sounded more like ‘hee-doe’.  

              His chuckle was ebullient as he settled across from her to take her vitals. “Blood pressure’s normal, but your temperature is a little high,” he remarked, turning to the computer on the consultation desk to enter the information into her electronic chart. “What seems to be the trouble, Higurashi-san?”

              Kagome, who had snuggled into the blanket enough that it covered the lower half of her face, reemerged from it to describe her symptoms. “For the last month or so, I feel like I always have a little temperature, but recently I’ve been having out and out fevers,” she said, “most recently 39 degrees two nights ago for a few hours, though it went back down on its own.”[1] Jinenji glanced at her before resuming his typing, dutifully transcribing her report. “Headache, nausea, vomiting… this last week I’ve barely managed to keep anything down that isn’t tea or plain rice.”

              He made a little tutting sound, and she saw the corners of his wide lips curl downward. She knew he was a hanyou, and she was certain he was the only one she knew in person. Did he have a youkai form, the way Sesshoumaru did, and a more human glamour? Really, he looked just like a normal human. Though now she thought about it, Sesshoumaru had two youkai forms, didn’t he. Every so often she could feel a waft of youki, but unlike the intentional, pointed feelings youki seemed to carry with it when wielded by her full-blooded friends, Jinenji-san’s had an almost benign quality to it. It was there, but it didn’t seem to want to affect her in any way.

              His eyes, deep, dark pools of brown, were on her now, thoughtful. “Any other symptoms?”

              “I…” Kagome chewed her lip. “I’m not sure it’s relevant?”

              “If you think to bring it up, it’s worth mentioning,” patiently, kindly.

              “I know that you and Dr. Satou see mostly youkai patients here,” she began, hedging a little. “Any Miko…?”

              “Most Miko go to regular doctors, Higurashi-san,” he replied, a gentle reminder that her referral here had been through her youkai acquaintances.

              “Well… does… is there much difference between youki and reiki in that sense?” she tried, fingers tapping on her knee.

              “Maybe it would be easiest if you would explain what your concern is, and then we can make the appropriate referral if needed,” came his suggestion.

              “Right. Okay. So. I don’t know.” She sucked in a breath. “Since I’ve been sick – and it’s been, gosh, what, since middle of March? – I’ve been having more and more trouble controlling my reiki.” She sighed. “I was getting really good at managing it. I’ve been training, you know. But now, I feel like a baby giraffe walking for the first time. Just—like I’ve lost all the control I worked so hard for, and I’ve regressed to barely even feeling where it comes from.”

              “Hmm.” He turned back to the computer, typing the last of what she said into a little textbox along with the history of her cold, and then tapped his chin in thought. “We’ll see what Dr. Satou says,” was his response, his kind eyes trailing back over to her face as he stood. “She’s been running a little behind today, so you may have ten or fifteen minutes to wait before she can come in to see you. Can I offer you anything?”

              Kagome declined, scooting further backward on the examination table so she could pull her knees into her chest and wrap the blanket closer around herself. Jinenji smiled at this, approaching her in that calm way of his before reaching his long fingers out to pluck an edge of the blanket and tuck it snugly under her bare feet. She shot him a grateful grin before reclining against the wall, ducking her nose down into her chest as he made his exit.

              Her phone vibrated twice. Kagome reached out of her cocoon to where her cellphone lay, screen lit, at the end of the exam table, and thumbed through her notifications. Both from Sesshoumaru.  _I recall that your medical appointment is today. I hope it goes well_ , the first. And the second, oddly enough,  _Would you allow me to visit you upon my return?_

              On a long sigh, Kagome tipped her head back,touching the crown to the wall. Overwhelmingly, she wanted to say yes. She hadn’t heard his voice in weeks. She hadn’t seen him. She missed him. He had been so respectful of her need for distance after the  _hanami_  debacle, and at the same time reassuringly present in any way that she would permit him. Murasaki-sensei had encouraged Kagome to take the time she needed to process her feelings of disappointment, as well as to attempt to separate her feelings from an objective narrative of what happened, in order to try and see the situation from Sesshoumaru’s point of view.

              She could, rationally, understand his hesitations, his emotional distance. That didn’t stop her from finding it painful, or from wishing that he could find a way to see past her mortality and just accept her.

              And then she’d remind herself that he had, first hand, seen his brother’s life ended by the heartbreak that came from losing his loved one and being cast adrift into loneliness. That Sesshoumaru had seen that, despite Inuyasha having lived many happy years together with Rin, once she passed, he was reduced to no more than a shell of his former self, lost in a grief which did not abate for centuries, until finally, unable to bear the passage of another day without her, he challenged a vastly more powerful demon to battle to bring about his own end. Sesshoumaru had confessed before that witnessing this had engendered a loathing within him for humans, and worse, for the weakness of the youkai that might come to love them.

              He had overcome that hang-up. But Sesshoumaru, she knew, was not an easy man. She hadn’t asked if he’d ever been in love before – goodness knows she wasn’t even prepared to ask him if he would consider  _this_  love, but – but she somehow had the feeling that a man whose emotions ran as deep as his did, would hardly have a storied romantic history. And having seen the desolation his brother endured, and what it eventually reduced him to, must certainly still prove a strong incentive to keep his heart as whole as he could manage.

              A drop of sweat rolled down the back of her neck and Kagome realized her temperature must be climbing again. When it reached the edge of her shirt and soaked into the fabric there and still she hadn’t moved, she snapped out of her woolgathering.

               _I’d love to see you. Still waiting for Dr. Satou._ She replied, just in time to set her phone down before the exam room door opened once more to admit her harried-looking physician.

              “Higurashi-san! You look dreadful.”

              Kagome laughed. “You look exhausted,” she replied, wrapping the blanket tighter around herself.

              “Ugh, yes,” Dr. Satou said, turning from where she’d reached into an empty file bin out of habit. “It’s this changeover to the digital charts. I feel like I’m learning everything from scratch. But we have to catch up with  _the times_ , you know how it is.” She’d settled herself at the computer and tried to log in twice before throwing her hands up and grabbing a notepad out of her pocket. “I’ll be here until midnight rewriting all these stupid notes on the computer.”

              Kagome made a sympathetic sound, waiting patiently for her doctor to organize a few boxes on her little sheet before turning to look at her at last.

              “Jinenji-kun briefed me on what’s been going on with you. Did you think of any other symptoms while you were waiting?” When Kagome shook her head, Dr. Satou scooted her stool closer and beckoned Kagome to move to sit at the edge of the exam table. “Let’s have a look, then, shall we?”

              What followed was a surprisingly standard physical exam with only a few notable deviations from what she had come to expect from a doctor’s visit: she was asked to try and channel her reiki to her extremities (this, done with Dr. Satou standing warily across the room), to smell from three tiny and tightly capped jars, and to count how many youkai she could sense in the near vicinity. She couldn’t feel any.

              Which was disappointing, because the last was something she had, in idle moments, been practicing; ever since  _the burned arm incident_ she had been determined to not be caught so unaware of her surroundings again. But the problem was, Yura had been quite right about most youkai keeping their energy tightly coiled around themselves. Every so often she could sense the youki of a stranger, but if they stood any more than two meters away, she was usually limited to sensing only that of her close personal acquaintance.

              The smell test didn’t mean much to her – they all smelled kind of the same, vaguely minty – but she was sure the test would mean something different for Dr. Satou’s nonhuman clientele.

              Said doctor took some notes on her little sheet of paper and tapped her chin thoughtfully with her pen, a little blue line of ink going unnoticed just under her lower lip. Eventually she turned to her patient and began. “Well as you know, youki and reiki are two different beasts. I don’t know that there’s anyone around that knows much of anything about the kind of spiritual energy  _you_  have, in a medical way. Its been lost to humanity for the most part. Nobody’s had enough of it to have any problems with it in centuries, and I gather that whatever information was out there about it back then has likely been lost. There’s my disclaimer.”

              Kagome nodded her head. This much she had expected.

              “The best I can do is compare it to a parallel body system in youkai, and that’s youki, of course. If you were a demon, Higurashi-san, I would say that the fevers, the colds, the headaches, the nausea, the vomiting, are all symptoms of the issues you’re having with your youki. It’s reading like coagulating hyperyoukemia to me.” Dr. Satou waited, eyes flicking over Kagome’s expression, maybe looking for any shred of understanding, but apparently finding none. “Imagine spiritual energy is like cholesterol.”

              At this, Kagome laughed, and Dr. Satou cracked a smile. Kagome mopped her forehead with a handful of her blanket. “Oh, I meant to tell you that I think my temperature’s gone up again,” Kagome cut in quickly, and waited for a moment as Dr. Satou re-checked her temperature, made a moue of displeasure at seeing it nearing 40 again, and then rummaged around in a locked drawer for a medicine to give her patient. “Grandpa has high cholesterol,” Kagome mentioned before tossing back a pair of aspirin.

              “Right. So hyper- _lipid_ -emia is the condition of having too many lipids, which includes cholesterol and triglycerides, in the blood. Hyper—too much. Lipid—fats. In the blood—emia.”

              “That means this would be too much  _youki_  in the blood?”

              A geeky grin appeared on Dr. Satou’s face. “Well actually, youki doesn’t travel in the blood exclusively; the condition was named by a lazy researcher who just liked the parallel form between the two terms. But it’s similar in principle.”

              Kagome thought about that. The things Mama always worried about when it came to her grandfather’s high cholesterol was the increased risk of clots. “But youki isn’t a fat, so it can’t clot. Is that why it’s called  _coagulating_?”

              Dr. Satou laughed then, a little delighted. “Smart cookie. So, imagine that we have these canals in our bodies that carry our spiritual power. Someone with CHYE would have a little sludge mixed in with the water. Eventually enough sludge gathers in one place and creates a little bit of a dam, which narrows the opening of the canal and messes with the flow of the stream. See where we’re going here?”

              She nodded.

              “Side effects of having gummed up works in such a crucial body system include all of the ones that you’ve mentioned, plus a few more.”

              “Hence the smell test?”

              Again Dr. Satou laughed, “I figured we should do that one for completeness’ sake, even though I knew it was unlikely that with your human senses you could get much out of it.”

              Kagome blinked. She knew intellectually that Dr. Satou was youkai, of course, given the nature of her medical practice, but somehow… “So, what’s the treatment?”

              “Well, like I said.  _If_  this were CHYE, I would prescribe a certain collection of herbal teas, a regimen of meditation, elimination of meat and poultry from the diet for about 3 weeks…” She shifted uncomfortably on her stool. “But just because those remedies work for CHYE doesn’t mean they would work for what’s ailing  _you_. You can always give them a try, of course. And in the meantime, I’ll prescribe some medications to help manage the side-effects.”

              Dr. Satou turned toward the table to jot down some notes on her sheet, and Kagome watched as her back curled over her work. “So, what causes it?”

              “Well,” the pen stopped scribbling over the paper as Dr. Satou swiveled around, facing her once more. “Again, in youkai, it’s a combination of genetic predisposition and lifestyle, usually a rejection of natural instincts is the most commonly associated.”

              “Hmm,” Kagome chewed on that one as her doctor finished the notes she was writing. Honestly, this was the most in tune she’d ever felt with the spiritual power within her; the only thing making her feel disconnected with it was its sudden noncooperation when she tried to use it. She had been embracing it whole-heartedly. But maybe embracing the reiki itself wasn’t the issue. A rejection of natural instincts.

              What were her natural instincts?

              What did her reiki want her to  _do_?

              The commute back to her apartment, though lengthy, barely seemed to register in her mind as she mulled that one over. Ikami-san would have an answer, she was sure, but Ikami-san wasn’t a Miko, and worse, she didn’t have any reiki of her own.

              Neither did Ichiro, but her cousin at least had grown up with rigorous religious training in their family’s shrine. He also had a wealth of knowledge on the history of Miko, and a suitably progressive worldview to balance out the rigid traditionalism of that training. Plus, he was a charmer and she loved him, and she was so happy to have gotten to know him finally, and to be able to count him as a friend.

              All valid reasons to reach out to him.

              That, and she was dying to know how things were going with him and Yura.

              Once safely ensconced within the four walls of her tiny little apartment once more, Kagome sent off a brief text message to Sesshoumaru alerting him that she was home and that he could come by any time, but she needed an hour to take care of some things. She had barely made it to Ichiro’s number in her contact list before Sesshoumaru texted back to confirm that he would stop by in promptly one hour.

              Ichiro picked up on the third ring. “Kagome-chan!” his voice, light and happy, made Kagome smile. “What’s up little cousin? I feel like I haven’t heard from you in ages!”

              “I texted you a week ago!”

              “I said  _heard_ from you. Yura’s here, mind if I put you on speaker?” He didn’t wait for permission, because the very next moment Kagome heard Yura’s lilting laughter as she called a greeting from across the room.

              “Where are you guys?”

              “Café Edward,” he replied. Yura’s little café. She should have figured.

              Kagome covered the receiver of her phone and turned her head away to sneeze. She sniffled miserably, shuffled over to her bed and wrapped herself up in her blankets like a bird settling into a nest, as she and her cousin exchanged pleasantries and updates.

              “So what else is new, cuz?” he asked, a little loudly, over the sound of Yura’s uncontrolled giggling over some silly pun he’d just finished making.

              “Well, my doctor thinks I have coagulating hyperyoukemia,” she said, offhand, as though it were no big deal.

              Yura’s giggles stopped immediately. There was a moment of perfect silence on the line.

              “Kagome-chan… you’re not youkai,” came Yura’s soft voice in gentle reminder.

              “Or, it’s what I would have if I were, at any rate. Parallel symptoms with my reiki,” she sighed.

              “…Ohhh, my little problem child,” came Ichiro’s voice, long-suffering, and Kagome could picture the two of them exchanging a meaningful look during the span of the quiet that preceded. She reached for a tissue and honked her nose into it. “Want me to look into it a little for you?”

              “Would you?” She cleared her throat. “I can email you all the details?”

              “Please do. STAT.” Kagome heard Yura groan in response to that, and crooked a smile herself in response. “I mean it. Right now. I’ll call you back when I’ve had a chance to look into it, and then we’ll chat. For real. I want to hear more from you than ‘everything is awful’, okay?”

              “Okay.”

              “Can I call you later, Kagome-chan? A talk for just us girls?” Yura piped in.

              “Oh, yes, please!” They disconnected shortly and Kagome sat dutifully down at her desk to type out a history of her symptomology, Dr. Satou’s diagnosis and recommendations, and send the email off to her cousin.

              She left nothing out, and writing everything in excruciating detail took a surprisingly long while. By the time she was done, she had just enough leeway to freshen up – a quick shower and change of clothes – before she felt the lick of youki at her ankles that signified that Sesshoumaru was close. She heard his key click in the lock, and felt her heart pang at the reminder that even though they spent the majority of their time together at his apartment, and that even though he had a key for  _her_  front door, she did not have one for his.

              But the bitterness in her throat vanished when, for the first time in weeks, he walked through her door.

              He hadn’t waited to make it inside her apartment to doff his human guise; instead, he sauntered in with his markings in prominence, eyes golden and hair a brilliant silvery white, skin like alabaster appearing to shine from within.

              She was struck with the ethereality of his beauty. His high cheekbones, the almost alien quality of his mask-like face, readable to her only because she knew him so well, knew how to interpret the way his energy danced around her, the way the light glimmered within the endless depths of his eyes. He was so  _other_ — belonging to a plane of existence completely unlike her own.

              Essentially immortal, in that his strength knew no equal, and it would only be by another’s hand that he could ever find his end.

              And she…

              So plain by comparison.

              So transparent.

              So human.

              So mortal.

              A blind panic seized her heart and her breath stilled in her chest.

              His hand reached for her, clawed fingertips closing around her forearm, opposite arm wrapping around her waist and holding her tightly to him as he buried his nose in the crown of her head.

              Slowly, the breath she’d been holding squeezed itself from her lungs. A tentative fingertip trailed up his shirtfront to curl into the material of his sleeve. Unseeing, she nuzzled in, body aligning to his.

              Minutes passed, breaths synchronizing, until their bodies were moving in tandem with the flow of the air passing between them. There were no words, but the closeness they shared spoke to a multitude of feelings that had been waiting, desperate for expression, since he had dropped her off after their disastrous  _hanami_  date.

              Slowly, he raised his head from her hair, and pulled away from her just enough to study her face.

              Ugh.

              She’d freshened up, but how she must  _look_. Red nose, broken skin from the tissues rubbing so constantly against it. Puffy eyes. Blotchy color all over from the temperature she could feel starting to climb again while she was in the shower.

              “You are unbearably lovely,” he murmured, bringing his hand to cradle the back of her head, thumb caressing the delicate skin below her ear. His eyes softened. “But you appear remarkably unwell.” Kagome’s cheeks flushed. He guided her to her bed and settled her there, snatching her comforter and wrapping it around her, heedless of the warmth of the room. He offered her tea, she declined. His youki too blanketed over her, in that familiar wave of  _calm calm calm_. “May I ask what the physician had to say?”

              Kagome blinked languidly, feeling dizzy suddenly, and a little lethargic. “She doesn’t know what it is, but she suggested that it’s a malady originating from my reiki rather than the other way around.” She left out the explanation regarding the CHYE; she couldn’t quite put her finger on why, but the omission seemed imperative just now. “Ichiro-kun is looking into it for me, though he’s not sure he’ll find anything.”

              Sesshoumaru settled beside her on the mattress, pulling her into his side and wrapping his arm around her shoulder. His hand settled on her head, alternately massaging her scalp and carding through her hair. “Rest now. I will accompany you until you fall asleep.”

              “Thank you,” she mumbled, turning her head into his chest, leaning her weight heavily on him.

              What she meant to say, really, was ‘sorry’.

               _Calm calm calm calmcalmcalm._

              Sorry that their reunion was taken up with her illness. That just now she must paint an awful picture of her own impending end, which whether imminent or eventual, would feel all too soon to him. That all she could think of was how she must appear so weak in his eyes just now, when all she wanted—

              “Kagome!”

              Had he been speaking? “I’m sorry,” she tilted her head up to look at him from where it lay in his lap. When had she gotten on his lap? “I’m so out of it.”

              Sesshoumaru’s expression was uncharacteristically pinched, his eyes wide and as close to panicked as she’d ever seen them. “Can you tell me your name? Do you know where you are?”

              “Higurashi Kagome. We’re at…” she glanced around, recognizing the furnishings of the small apartment, “… my place,” she said, and realized that her words were sounding a little slurred, a little drunk. She moved to try to sit up, but he pushed her back down to lay still.

              “I think you may have had a seizure,” came his voice, flat, but somehow brimming with tension.

              “A—” she gulped, swallowing past the dryness in her throat.

              “I will call an ambulance. Where is your phone?”

              Kagome’s tongue felt thick in her mouth suddenly, and she gestured woozily to the kitchen counter.

              He extracted himself from below her, using his phone to call emergency services. Vaguely, she registered him holding her phone out to her to unlock, hearing him make a call once she’d managed to type in her passcode. Her vision turned dark, and she nodded off.

              It was the first seizure she’d ever had, and luckily the only one. The ambulance took her back to the hospital where she’d received her care after  _the stabbing_ , and the other phone call Sesshoumaru made must have been to her mother, because she and Souta were both there, waiting in the emergency department when they pulled into the ambulance bay.

              Her stay at the hospital had been blessedly short. CT scans, MRIs, EEG, bloodwork, everything came back normal.

              Mama, as predicted,  _loved_  Sesshoumaru. He visited every one of the four days she stayed as an inpatient there, with flowers, or a fresh pajama, or a fruit basket, or a combination of the three in hand every time he came by. That attentiveness alone had been enough to win over Mrs. Higurashi. His attractiveness and impeccable good manners had taken care of the rest.

              Dr. Satou also came in to visit once. She didn’t have hospital privileges there, but somehow word had gotten to her through the grapevine of Kagome’s admission, and she stopped in one evening after her clinic hours were over, coincidentally, just as Sesshoumaru arrived as well.

              That interaction, though brief, was  _incredibly_  revealing.

              Dr. Satou had bustled into Kagome’s hospital room, still clad in her white coat, with the same no-nonsense air about her that was so familiar from how she handled their office visits, but a softness in her expression that spoke of  _sympathy for the unwell_  that hadn’t been present before. “Higurashi-san,” she greeted.

              Kagome wanted to offer her someplace to sit, but the nurse had come in earlier and stolen her only chair in order to lend it to another room on the ward that was overflowing with visitors. That didn’t seem to bother Dr. Satou, though, because she just perched herself comfortably on the side of Kagome’s bed by her knees, and peered down at her erstwhile patient.

              “You’re just a mess, aren’t you?” she asked, a fond little smile on her face as her eyes sparkled with befuddlement. “You were home – what? – a few hours? Someone is going to question my medical capabilities, Higurashi-san,” she teased.

              “Indeed someone will,” came Sesshoumaru’s voice from the doorway. This was the first time he had ever reigned himself in, hidden his aura, made it imperceptible, and the surprise that skittered down her spine at hearing him before sensing him made her nearly jump out of her skin.

              Dr. Satou stood and turned sharply. She immediately bowed low, murmuring “Sesshoumaru-sama,” in a tone of shocked reverence, before straightening and angling her body so she could keep Kagome in her peripheral vision as well.

              “You are the physician in charge of Kagome’s medical care,” he inferred, moving to the opposite side of the bed and laying a possessive hand on Kagome’s shoulder. The movement did not go unnoticed.

              “Yes—though, not in hospital. I am her primary care physician,” she said, bowing again as she introduced herself.

              Sesshoumaru’s lips tightened slightly, screaming that his dissatisfaction had intensified. Kagome doubted if Dr. Satou noticed.

              “So it is your negligence that sent her home in the condition that led to this hospitalization.”

              Dr. Satou straightened, but otherwise seemed unperturbed by his accusations. “One cannot predict a seizure, Sesshoumaru-sama. When Higurashi-sama left my office, she was improving.”

              His chin tilted upward ever so slightly, but the rush of youki that swirled around them, aggressive in its malcontent, said everything that his facial expression kept hidden. Dr. Satou’s whole body flinched from the onslaught of so powerful a wave, full of such dark intention, washing over her.

              For her part, Kagome became aware of a dull throb in her stomach, and the feeling of a small sparking sensation in the middle of her chest — like flint striking steel. She doubled over in her bed, clutching and grasping at her belly, in so much pain her vision turned black and she almost lost consciousness… and just like that the attack of youki around her stopped. Sesshoumaru leaned in, brushing her hair back so he could see her face, asked her what was wrong.

              “I’ll get her nurse. If you’ll excuse me, Sesshoumaru-sama. Higurashi-sama,” Dr. Satou intoned, and beat a hasty retreat from the room. Interestingly, though the nurse bustled in shortly, Dr. Satou did not return. Even more interestingly, the use of the  _-sama_  stuck, even in the brief, overall informal tone of the email she wrote to Kagome to apologize for staying away, and to remind her of the date of her next follow up appointment.

             

              It was middle of June before Ichiro got back to her with anything of substance. Tsuyu, the rainy season, was deep underway, and Kagome could no longer tell if the clammy sweat on her skin was from her fevers or from the humidity and the curtain of mist that hung in the air. She sat in the library at school, squinting through a pounding headache at a historical text that the library didn’t allow outside the building, when she felt her phone vibrate.            

              When she saw his name on the display, Kagome gently closed the tome, packed up her bag, and moved to replace the weathered book where it belonged. Phone in hand, she made her way to the exit, stopping in the little vestibule between the library doors and the outside, where there was still cool air but where she would be able to talk, and called her cousin back.

              “Hey there, Kagome-chan!” he bellowed from his end of the line.

              Kagome settled herself on the edge of a bench, weary of standing already. “Hey,” her smile carried over in her voice. “You got anything good for me?”

              “Well— if not good, it’s interesting, at any rate.”

              She stifled a groan. “Hit me with it.”

              “So there’s not much written about maladies relating to reiki. The few documented have to do with curses applied by witches, or being poisoned. Any of those fit?”

              Kagome laughed. “Nope.”

              “There are a few instances of Miko losing the ability to manipulate their spiritual energy, but these are all related to their leaving the life of a Miko behind. Running off and getting married, having babies.”

              “Why would marriage and babies do that?”

              “Now obviously I’m not one hundred percent sure, but.” He paused and gathered his breath. “I think, disinterest? Get married and have babies, why would you want to hunt youkai anymore? I bet you money they still managed enough control to heal Junior’s scraped up knees though,” he chortled.

              “So, like, they fell out of practice.”

              “Yeah, that’s my theory. Out of practice. And like a muscle, it atrophies over time.”

              “Hmm,” Kagome chewed her lip for a moment. “Doesn’t sound like my problem.”

              “No, it doesn’t, does it. But it got me thinking. Maybe not out of practice, but over-practice? Like a muscle strain? Overuse injury?”

              She made a noise of dismissal, not convinced.

              “What does Ikami-san say?”

              “She  _said_  ‘try harder’. It’s so bad now that Sesshoumaru gave her leave to return home, with the promise that he’ll call her back when I’m in working condition again.”

              “Man.” Kagome could almost hear him thinking. “Well. Is there anything that seems to make your symptoms better? Or worse?”

              Kagome glanced out the window, toward the verdant tree-tops and grasses, glistening with moisture even though it hadn’t rained for a few hours. The sky was a pale grey, but bright; a thin veil of clouds suspended between sun and earth. She had thought about it before, but had never seemed to be able to organize her thoughts on the subject.

              Now, with the cool air blowing on her from above, the bright, pale light reflecting off dewy leaves and filtering in through the glass panels between her and the outside, she felt like she was very tentatively connecting two dots that had been reaching for one another for a while.

              “What is a Miko’s natural instinct?” she asked him. He made a confused noise. “Dr. Satou said that youkai with coagulating hyperyoukemia get it from a combination of genetic predisposition and lifestyle, usually a rejection of natural instincts. So what is a Miko’s natural instinct?”

              “Well—” he started. “Traditionally, to exterminate youkai. But that’s not an instinct, it’s indoctrination. And you’re not a Miko.”

              “Okay. So what is  _reiki_ ’s natural instinct?”

              “To heal.”

              Kagome considered. Had she been doing much healing? She thought of the arm, charred, black and red and crumbling. She thought of Sesshoumaru’s hand, blistered briefly, then healed as if by magic by the power of his own youki.

              “But youki heals too,” she murmured.

              “Youki heals  _youkai_.”

              “Reiki heals humans. Reiki  _hurts_  youkai.”

              “Kagome-chan…?” He sounded tentative, unsure.

              “Give me a second. I’m thinking.” It heals in turn, it harms in turn. But she had been doing much more of one than the other. And, like, weirdly, some of the  _harming_  hadn’t been harming for harming’s sake… her cheeks flushed a brilliant red, thinking of the numerous encounters between herself and her lover, when that pink-tinged energy had been released between them, setting off sparks of arousal rather than pain.

              But that  _couldn’t_  be it. She went back to his question of things that made her symptoms worse or better. She thought back to the day of her seizure. How had that happened? She couldn’t remember much. Descending into an anxiety spiral, and Sesshoumaru must have picked up on it because he pushed calm onto her like he was shoving her under a waterfall, but that’s all she really remembered.

              And then there was the time when Dr. Satou had visited in the hospital. That had been bad. Sesshoumaru had been angry then, she remembered, threatening Dr. Satou with those aggressive waves of youki. She’d been feeling almost well before then, then when he’d done that, she’d almost passed out. The spark in her belly, like flint hitting steel. And when he’d stopped accosting her doctor, all of a sudden, her pain had stopped, and she’d gotten better.

              “Do you think, maybe… youki can count as poison…?”

              Sesshoumaru  _did_  have poison within his claws, after all, though he’d never used it on her.

              Ichiro’s voice on the other end of the line hummed low. “You mean, with prolonged exposure?” She didn’t need to answer. He knew she was talking about Sesshoumaru. “I don’t know. I would guess so. I can look into it. But I think… historically, it seems unlikely that there would be many instances of Miko who would voluntarily be in the presence of a demon without intent to kill them.”

              Kagome hummed, but her mind was elsewhere. He was right of course, that it wouldn’t be in the texts anywhere. But she could think of two.

              When she had settled down in bed that evening, Kagome made herself as comfortable as possible before centering herself with a half-hour’s meditation practice. She needed to be as calm as she could possibly manage for the conversation that was coming.

              Sesshoumaru answered almost before the first ring was over. “Good evening,” his warm voice greeted her, smooth and affectionate in a way she knew only she might recognize.

              “Hi. Sesshoumaru, I have a few questions that I need you to answer as honestly and with as much detail as you can manage.”

              “Should I come over?”

              “No, thank you,” she replied primly. “I want to say yes. I have a theory I’m working on. If I’m right, I’ll explain why at the end.” He hummed his assent and waited quietly for her to begin. “How did Rin die?”

              The silence on the other end of the line was telling. He hadn’t been expecting that. “Old age, I expect,” he said, eventually.

              “Did she suffer any illnesses while she was alive?”

              She could practically hear him frowning, furrowing his brow, however minute those motions would appear on his smooth, perfect features. “She was remarkably healthy, for a human of the time,” he ventured after a reflective pause. “I recall mention of little worth noting.”

              Kagome harrumphed emphatically. “Please continue.”

              “Minor things for the most part. Colds, viruses. As she grew older, a broken bone or two.”

              “Really, nothing else stands out?”

              He considered for a long time. “…There was an incident, not long after the reassembly of the Shikon no Tama from its shards, during which she became quite ill. Vomiting, nausea, fevers.”

              Kagome’s metaphorical antennae shot up, eyes widening in the dark of her room. “Oh? How did that happen?”

              “I am not certain that the cause was ever determined. I believe they suspected contamination of the water supply, though none of the other villagers became ill. They returned to what would be Gunma prefecture today, where Rin was born, not long after that. Her illness improved shortly, but I always perceived that she was greatly affected in the aftermath.”

              “Affected, how?”

              “While she would never admit to it, every subsequent time we met, I was struck by the total absence of reiki within her, meager though it had been to begin with. I suspect the illness took it from her.”

              Kagome’s heart stuttered, and her breath stilled in her chest. “Was… was Inuyasha… a powerful youk— hanyou?”

              “Despite the weakness of his maternal line, he accumulated a strength that would have made his father proud,” Sesshoumaru murmured, a strain in his voice that made it seem that the concession cost him.

              “How would he compare, say, to Naraku?”

              “May I ask to what these questions tend?” A fleck of impatience in his tone.

              “Please, Sesshoumaru,” she pressed.

              “He would have defeated Naraku, though with some struggle, I should imagine.”

              Kagome paused to consider. Sesshoumaru was leagues stronger than Naraku. Inuyasha had been barely just stronger, during the time when Rin had gotten sick. But from what Kagome had gathered, Rin’s fount of reiki was limited, by comparison, to her own. Significantly.

              Maybe that’s why Kagome had held out so much longer?

              Reiki and youki. Both can heal. Both can harm. Two forces, that when charged, create sparks off one another. Sesshoumaru, with his bottomless well of energy from which to draw. Kagome, with hers, likely much smaller by comparison, swallowed up in the face of his power and control. Rin, exposed consistently to the youki of a powerful hanyou for the span of several seasons, with the same illness eventually. A sample size of two – one of whom was only a good guess – wasn’t really much to base a medical theory on, she knew, but Kagome couldn’t shake the idea that she was on to something here.

              Sesshoumaru’s youki was poisoning her.

              Rin lost the ability to control her spiritual power after her illness, but went on to live a happy life in the arms of her love. Kagome knew she was losing the battle with  _her_  illness already. She could feel it. The sputtering ignition of her reiki as it moved from its fount within her. The progressively diminishing control. The worsening weakness.   

              She stewed on the idea for what felt like minutes. Sesshoumaru must have heard her thinking, for he remained quiet and patient on the line. When she drew in a long, slow breath, he hummed his curiosity.

              “Hear me out,” she ejaculated, expecting before having said anything that he would take exception to the hypothesis she was becoming increasingly more convinced was correct.

              “I am prepared to listen without interruption.”

              She smiled off-kilter, a little charmed, and took a few calming breaths. “I think I have what Rin had.”

              “Contaminated well water?” The puzzlement was evident in his voice.

              “Sesshoumaru!” Not one sentence in and he’d butted in already!

              “That was not an interruption, but a request for clarification.”

              Kagome’s lips firmed in displeasure but she let that one go. “Let me rephrase then. I think Rin had what I have now. She didn’t have contaminated well water. She was experiencing the same symptoms I am, and I think between us there’s a common cause.” She paused, waiting for acknowledgement, and belatedly realizing that  _aizuchi_ were not considered interruptions, he made a little humming sound, infinitely more placating than his usual ‘hn’ [2]. And in fact, she  _was_  waiting for that, but she was also buying time to figure out a minimally-insulting way of saying what she had to say. “I’m pretty sure it’s all ill-effects due to youki over-exposure.”

              Sesshoumaru said nothing.

              “Dr. Satou compared what I was experiencing to coagulating hyperyoukemia, do you—” here he cut her off with a brisk ‘ _yes_ ’, and she forged onward with, “and said that the cause in youkai can be rejection of natural instincts. And I got to thinking, what is  _reiki_  meant to do? But maybe it’s not really what it’s meant to  _do_  so much as  _what it is_. It’s an opposing force to youki. Oil and water. The two can’t mix. So when exposed to an overwhelming onslaught of it on a constant basis, without intent to fight that youki off, it just kind of… shuts itself off. Is my theory.”

              Sesshoumaru said nothing.

              “I mean, Ichiro-kun tells me there’s nothing in the literature about Miko spending prolonged periods of time in youkai company so Rin’s story was the best I had to go by. But her symptoms are the same as mine. And what’s happening with my reiki seems to be paralleling what happened to hers. I’m sure if the reverse was true… I mean, you know, are there any cases you know of where a youkai lost control of their youki from overexposure to a more powerful reiki?”

              He scoffed.

              “What about a child? Could a Miko not have taken in a youkai or hanyou child, and had something like this happen as a result?”

              “No,” came his firm denial. “Rin was singular in her acceptance of youkai and hanyou company. Any other Miko would have killed a child with demon ancestry, no matter how far removed, if they could sense the youki within them. They would not have suffered their presence. They would have considered them a danger.”

              Kagome balked. “Surely not a child…?”

              “The world was far less compassionate in those years, my dear,” he murmured, though there was a cold edge in his voice. “And even now you are in the minority.”

              Her throat felt tight. She tried to swallow, blinked hard past the threat of tears. “Okay. Okay.” A shaky indrawn breath. “Still, I think I’m right about this. It’s been coming on slowly, for months now. But the times where it’s gotten worse, where it’s taken a step toward shutting itself off, has have been when you’ve been, uh… liberal… with expressing yourself… via your youki.”

              “… I see.” He chewed on that for a while, and Kagome found herself counting her heartbeats until he spoke again. “I am pleased you have brought this to my attention, even though it appears you have consulted every other possible source first.”

              “Excuse me?”

              “Keeping me at arm’s length, or trying to spare yourself some pain again, perhaps?”

              Agog, Kagome sputtered, “I asked my doctor first because she’s a  _doctor_ , and my cousin next because he has  _resources_. Then I came to you.”

              “Darling girl,” he murmured, apparently mollified, and ever-so-slightly patronizing. “Did you forget that of everyone that you know, not one of them has access to greater resources than this Sesshoumaru?”

 

-+-

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Act II AN: Not gonna lie, ya’ll, thinking up medical explanations for youkai ailments may have been more fun/work than expected. Did you note the jab at the lazy researcher? I wonder who that could refer to! Also I know it got a little angsty there for a spell but, like, she’s been really sick, and relationships are hard. Especially when you’re with a perfect, possibly eternal being with a totally reasonable fear of commitment.  
> Footnotes:  
> [1] 39 degrees Celsius is about 102 Fahrenheit. I can never decide what units of measure to use for this story!  
> [2] Aizuchi, written as相槌 or あいづち refers to the many little interjections that occur during conversation between Japanese speakers to show they are paying attention. These might include ‘aa’ ‘ee’ ‘un’, ‘hai’, ‘sou desu ne/ka’, ‘honto’, ‘maji’, ‘naruhodo’; and while many mean “yes” or “I understand”, they don’t actually mean that in the context of aizuchi, just that the listener is listening. Just a cool factoid, if you ever wondered about that.


	8. Act II, Part III: Travel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: TW for discussions of mortality, illness, and angst in this Act, duders.

-+-

 

**Han-Kichi : An Omikuji Epilogue**

Act Two

In Three Parts

 

-+-

III

旅立ち Travel: Travel will prove fruitful.

 

              They kept their meetings throughout the end of June to snatches of time less than an hour long, and in public places. The objective in doing this, of course, was to minimize her exposure to the strong currents of his youki, in order to preserve access to her reiki for as long as possible. Their conversation was kept light, pleasant. Calm, calm, calm. He hadn’t said much, but it seemed that he was working on a solution.

              Which was nice, because it seemed like she had reached a dead end every other way she turned. It didn’t really matter, though. Her control was practically gone now, atrophied down to almost nothing. She could feel the loss as almost imminent, and anticipated it with a resigned dread that weighed her shoulders down and filled her belly with bile.

              Ikami-san having returned home, further training curtailed for the moment, and in-person time spent with her boyfriend wound down to a minimum (though they spent an admittedly excessive amount of time texting or on the phone), Kagome found herself with an excess of free time. She filled it with a lackluster dedication to her dissertation. Ueda-sensei had even remarked on her satisfying progress and the pleasing quality of her work.

              June rolled into July. The tree outside her bedroom window was alive with the buzzing of cicadas. Tsuyu was beginning to taper off, and with it, Kagome’s ability to camouflage her illness as just dewy, sweaty skin from the humid, sticky weather.

               Sango and Miroku, attached at the hip, invited her out periodically. Occasionally she went. They had noticed her ill health, and while Miroku was aware of the reasons behind it, Sango was spinning her wheels, thinking Kagome had come down with tuberculosis, or the plague, or whatever other ailment she had been googling that week. Kouga, informed through the grapevine of the tentative diagnosis and the current plan of interventions, stuck to texting her, lest the addition of another source of youkai energy to her environment make things worse. But he texted, and that was nice.

              As she was finishing up work on a draft revision for one of her classes one night, her phone lit up, buzzing with an incoming text message alert. Kagome glanced at the clock on her desk — it was past eleven. That would be Sesshoumaru, then.

              She opened her text message app and thumbed through to his newest text.  _Are you available during the summer break?_

Figuring it would be easier to discuss rather than text back and forth, she dialed him, leaning back in her chair, careless of the time. “I have an internship lined up,” she replied after they’d greeted one another. “What’s going on?”

              He hummed, thoughtful. “Do you get any two days off together, during that time?”

              Kagome clicked her tongue and flipped open her calendar, looking at the dates she had marked off. “I get four, actually, right in the middle.”

              “Excellent.” He asked for the specific days and she listed them off for him, her ears catching the sound of him scribbling the numbers down on a notepad. “I have an acquaintance that may be able to share some insight into your situation. I should like for us to go and visit him together.”

              Her eyes widened, eagerness bubbling up within her. “What, really? Who?”

              “Unfortunately, I can’t tell you just yet,” he sighed, and she could hear the weary resignation in that slow exhale. “He lives in some remote forest land to the West. I would like us to depart the night before your first free day—the 23rd. Does that suit?”

              She agreed, he informed her he would send her a packing list. She thanked him, he reminded her that it was late and instructed her to go to bed. Goodnights exchanged, they hung up. Kagome replayed the conversation through her head.

              A four-day trip with her boyfriend. Granted, the stated purpose of the trip was essentially ‘see a specialist about your medical condition’, but… four days, just the two of them together, when they’d barely been together in any  _substantial_ way in well over a month now. That was something, right? Her heart fluttered; her cheeks turned pink.

              They hadn’t  _kissed_ , really, in… let alone  _anything else_. And they’d just started dating. That wasn’t normal right?

              “Actually,” Sango informed her, over coffee the next afternoon, the two of them hidden in a corner of their shitty campus cafeteria. “You’ve been like the walking dead since about March. So, it’s super normal and makes total sense.”

              Kagome frowned. She felt a dribble of snot start to run down from her nose, and rushed to mop it up with her napkin.

              “No, sorry,” Sango recanted, entirely facetious, “you’re looking super-hot and healthy right now and a good boyfriend would totally want to tap that.”

              “Okay fine,” she relented. “I get it. But I can’t help it. We were really…  _you know._ ”

              “Going at it like bunny-rabbits?” Sango waggled her eyebrows suggestively. “Trying to make up for This Great Nation’s recent trend toward childlessness?”

              “Oh, shut  _up_ ,” Kagome bit out a laugh. “You sound more and more like Miroku every day. Sick perverts, the both of you.”

              “And the both of  _you_ , from what you’re telling me,” Sango cackled, turning her coffee cup in her hands.

              But Sango’s reassurance helped Kagome feel at ease, and as the date of their departure approached, despite the ever-present waning of her spiritual self-possession, she felt a bubble of excitement about the prospect of their trip. She tried to bear Murasaki-sensei’s advice in mind; to temper her expectations, that expectations breed disappointment, to talk through her thoughts and feelings with her partner, rather than expect him to intuit what she was hoping for, if anything, outside of the mission statement of their trip. “Sesshoumaru-sama is no mere youkai,” Murasaki-sensei had reminded her. “He is a  _Daiyoukai_. He is fathoms above the rest of us. His thoughts and perceptions and experience of the world then, will be equally as separate from ours. And by extension, the differences between him and  _you_ are exponentially greater. The  _cultural differences_  between you are vast, but not unmanageable.  _If_  you communicate. If you do not tell him, he likely will not perceive.”

              Sound advice, Kagome figured.

              Just how to phrase ‘even though I’m sweaty and disgusting, and my nose is running and I probably smell of fever, I’d really like to bone’…?

              Honestly, she could go without the sex, even. She just missed the physical closeness, the intimacy of their skin touching, the comfort of their bodies pressed together.

              At any rate, she had some time to figure out her elevator pitch.

             

              Sesshoumaru picked her up from the dingy, seventies-style office building that housed the facility where she was interning over the break. Ueda-sensei’s championing in conjunction with the incontrovertibly objective praise of Sesshoumaru’s recommendation letter had netted her a desirable spot interning with a historical preservation advocacy group along with two other girls her age. It was all popcorn ceiling tiles and fluorescent lighting and low-walled cubicles inside the suite, but she was enjoying the work. The research and report-writing she was good at from previous experience, but she was delighting in learning more about the project-planning aspects associated with the work. Her weekend bag earned her a few looks and some good-natured ribbing, but the total silence that fell over her co-workers when they got an eyeful of the man who pulled up to the curb for her, who got out of the car, kissed her cheek, and loaded her bag in the trunk before handing her into the vehicle and shutting her door for her, made it all worthwhile.

              The drive, however, took some of the pep out of her metaphorical step.

              It was long, and she was tired, and Sesshoumaru was minimally available for conversation, spending the majority of the five-hour drive on a conference call, speaking in a foreign language she couldn’t identify, let alone understand.

              So much for a humble novelist-cum-university professor, though she supposed she was happy that he was exposing her to the side of his life that was not made for human consumption.

              By the time they arrived at their hotel, a modern-styled ryokan, it was well past midnight, and Kagome could barely keep her eyes open. She settled into a cozy chair by a little indoor fire-pit as Sesshoumaru checked them in, tottering after him absently through silent, cedar-scented corridors until they reached a lone door at the furthest end of the sprawling building.

              Two futon, next to one another, on a raised wooden platform tucked off to the side of the room, a small kitchenette, a water closet to one side, and a walk-through shower on the other, which opened up to the private balcony, where a grey-slate tiled  _routenburo_  piped in steaming hot water from the springs below. She’d never had access to a private hot spring bath, and certainly not one like this – this was a new level of luxury entirely. Leaning precariously against the balcony rail, Kagome looked down to see the river winding its way below. On the banks across, a thick wall of bamboo protected their private paradise from the eyes of onlookers. The bamboo leaves tinkled together in the breeze like glass windchimes, melodic and serene.

              “Maybe we can have a bath in the morning?” Kagome asked, mopping her sweaty brow. She was too tuckered out for that whole ordeal just now. He nodded his agreement, and Kagome moved on leaden feet to the sink, pulling out her toothbrush and setting about her bedtime ablutions.

              She sunk down into the futon half-asleep already. With the last shred of her consciousness, she registered the tickle of Sesshoumaru’s hair as he leaned over to kiss her forehead, heard his soft steps as he moved about the room, and the soft click of the hotel room door as it opened, momentarily filling their space with light from the hallway, and then clicked again as it closed behind him.

              It was nice of him to think to try and separate them overnight.

             

              Not that it ended up making much difference. Sometime after four in the morning, her fever broke.

              When Kagome’s eyes batted open, the morning sunlight filtering in through the bamboo shades over the wall-to-wall glass on the balcony-side of the room, it was with a sense of wellness that she had grown unaccustomed to. The sheets and pillows around her weren’t mired in her own sweat. Her skin was for the most part dry, and comfortably warm. She breathed in deep, no impediment of nasal or sinus congestion to make the inhalation anything other than relaxing.

              She felt… truly well.

              But she also felt… somehow… cut off?

              Adrift?

              Alone?

              She sat up in bed, and nearly jumped out of her skin to see Sesshoumaru leaning against the opposite wall, still as a statue, eyes fixed inscrutably on her face.

              She  _looked_  at him. He looked as he always did. But something was missing. She couldn’t  _read_  him how she could before.

              With a flash of understanding, Kagome’s face crumpled. “It’s gone,” she whispered, blinking through a rising wall of tears as her gaze wandered to her hands, now fisted together on her lap. Five hours beside him in the car, with nothing passing between them had been enough to put out the last glowing ember of her reiki. Now, all she could taste was ashes. “It’s gone.”

              Sesshoumaru approached her slowly, the way one might approach a wounded animal. He sat down beside her on the edge of the bed, wound his arms around her shoulders, and tugged her close. As her nose bumped his chest, a desolate wail ripped from her throat, the realization of  _just what_  she had lost finally catching up to her.

              He said nothing, but cradled her to him, moving a hand in a soothing motion over her back. For all she knew, he could be swirling his youki around her, trying to calm her, as he often did. But there was no way for her to tell anymore.

              Because that part of her had shriveled up and died.

              Eyes red-rimmed behind her sunglasses, skin still blotchy and red from crying, Kagome followed Sesshoumaru out of the hotel, body close behind his to protect herself from the gazes of any curious onlookers they might encounter. Sesshoumaru’s fingers, tangled in hers, squeezed reassuringly as she led her through the building and out the front, where his car was waiting for them.

              They had another drive planned for today. Forty-five minutes in to national forest preserve, where they would leave the vehicle behind. From there, they would travel by air to their final destination.

              “It feels hopeless,” Kagome muttered, eyes downcast, unable even to raise her gaze to take in the passing sights as they sped down the highway through the countryside.

              Though he did not turn to look at her, his left hand reached across the divide in the car, settling over her thigh and kneading it comfortingly. “It may feel that way, but there is more knowledge out there in this world than the information we currently have in our grasp.”

              “You think your contact will know something?”

              Sesshoumaru’s lips quirked wryly. “He may.”

              Kagome sighed.

              “If…” Sesshoumaru cleared his throat.

              Kagome was struck at the uncertainty in his voice. The novelty of a false start in anything he had set his mind to say.

              For a split second, his irises darted in her direction, assessing her quickly before returning to the road. “I may be misconstruing your anxieties. Please correct me, if I have misunderstood.” He took in a breath. “It is apparent to me that though the connection with your reiki has been lost, your state of health is dramatically improved today.” A pause. “We persist in seeking a solution a problem that no longer exists, purely because the Shikon no Tama must be dealt with. If we learn anything of use at all, and whether or not it is ultimately of use, I want to reiterate that my affections for you will remain unchanged.”

              Stunned into perfect stillness, Kagome let the words wash over her. An invisible weight lifted from her shoulders – one she had not even acknowledged feeling, though it had her nearly collapsing with every step she’d taken.

              “You’d stay with me…” she licked her parched lips, blinking widened eyes, “… even knowing I could never truly  _see_  you again? Knowing that I would only ever be as weak as the rest of my kind…?”

              “I have great confidence in your strength of spirit,” he murmured in response, “whether it eludes your control or not.” His grip on her leg tightened minutely, and Kagome felt her heart well up with unadulterated happiness. It seemed, that though she had not said anything aloud, he had  _perceived_. Maybe he had a Murasaki-sensei of his own.

              The rest of the ride was comfortable. When they finally arrived at the park and exited the car, Sesshoumaru surprised her by moving to the trunk and pulling from it a large suitcase. He laid it over the hood of the car, unzipped it and opened it to reveal its mysterious contents.

              Kagome’s heart nearly stopped at the sight.

              Beautifully folded, silken white material, with a hexagonal pattern of sakura blossoms in red. The traditional hankimono and hakama he wore when he came to rescue her from Naraku’s clutches. His armor was there as well, neatly placed at the bottom of the suitcase. Oddly, his pelt was missing from the collection. She hadn’t seen him in those clothes since she had awoken in his bed, heart still beating safely in her chest, breath still stirring in her lungs; since he had brought her back to life.

              “We must change,” he said, moving the pile of his garments aside to expose the material of a folded kimono, removing it and placing it into her startled hands.

              With reverent fingers she petted the fabric, divinely soft silk, and took in the subtle nuance of its gradient color change, from white on the top to a soft pink at the bottom. Unfolding it, she saw it was a furisode, its long sleeves hanging down to hit at mid-calf, decorated with a delicate pattern of cherry blossoms clustered on their branches, the insides of the sleeves lined in bright red.

              When she was able to pull her eyes from the treasure he handed her, they were as wide open as her mouth was, and Sesshoumaru was half-dressed already. “Undress,” he instructed her. “I will help you don it correctly.”

              She had only just succeeded in disrobing herself, when he had finished his own dressing. While she hadn’t been looking, the white pelt had materialized, apparently from the ether, and lay over his shoulder and trailing down his back. He had even retrieved his swords from the backseat of the car and strapped them to his waist.

              He reached for her.

              Sesshoumaru had undressed her many times before, in many different ways. At times, hurriedly, aggressively, as though her clothing was a detestable barrier between him and her body, to be torn from her immediately and thoughtlessly, just so long as it was made to disappear. At times, sensually, teasingly, whetting their appetites for one another, enticing each other, revealing more of her to him to see, more of her to touch, more places on her body where she could  _feel_.

              But none of these could compare to the intimate web that spun about them, standing in a forest park next to his car, as his careful, elegant fingers skimmed her skin, maneuvering her  _into_  the underlayers and then the stunning kimono, rather than out of them.

              He circled about her, tucking, adjusting, rolling, flattening the fabric here and there, arranging everything just so. When he brought out the obi that was meant to match, Kagome held her breath. It was half charcoal grey, and half brilliant red, the two colors divided in the diagonal. The grey had the sparkle of the night sky, and the red was the same hexagonal pattern as on Sesshoumaru’s hankimono, though only a few of the shapes were filled with a sakura blossom. The obi-jime cord was again the same soft, pale pink of the furisode, and he knotted it elaborately, with the air of one well-practiced at the art. [1]

              Kagome smoothed her hands down over her thighs, then brought up to toy with the Shikon no Tama, now proudly displayed over her clothing, unaccountably nervous. His golden eyes took in her form, unblinking, assessing, and she bore his scrutiny for the span of several long breaths before she could bear the silence no longer. “Well?”

              He reached a clawed hand out and trailed it through the ends of her hair. “May I?” he asked, and at her shy nod, he moved behind her and stepped close. He gathered her hair loosely at her nape and pulled it aside. A gust of warm breath on her neck telegraphed his movements; his nose and moist lips came down and pressed against the soft skin at the side of her throat. Kagome’s breath hitched in her chest as he took a deep breath of his own, lips parting to place a gentle kiss on her nape. He withdrew, and in a few quick movements, had twisted her hair back and up.

              She felt him rummage for a moment, and then the sensation of a two-pronged pin sliding into her hair to keep it in place.

              When he came back around before her, Kagome felt her face heat up at the appreciation in his gaze. She reached to her purse, on the roof of the car, and pulled out her phone. Hesitating for only a second, she handed it to him.

              His lips quirked, but he accepted it from her hand, motioned her away from the car, took a few steps back, and snapped a number of pictures for her. When he handed her back the phone, she tucked it immediately away into the obi. Sesshoumaru put everything back into the car, locked up, tucked the car keys into the yellow and blue sash at his waist, and held his hand out to Kagome.

              “Ready?”

              Once situated in his arms, the cloud formed beneath their feet, and Kagome kept her gaze up, even when the ground fell away from beneath them, not falling into the same trap she had the last time.

              “Can I ask about the change of clothes?” Her eyes watered as the wind blew into them, and she blinked frantically before turning her head a little. They were moving much faster than their gentle climb along the mountain slope the night they went to see the cherry blossoms.

              “We are seeking to make a certain impression,” was his answer.

              “What impression would that be?”

              “On my part, contrition and obeisance. On yours…” he slipped his fingers around hers, heedless of the gentle little sting of his claws against her palm, “charm. An appeal to a traditional sort of charm.”

              Kagome laughed. “Do I have a traditional sort of charm?”

              “Not in the least,” again his fingers squeezed, teasingly, “though we hope perhaps to make that impression.”

              “And who are we seeking to impress?”

              Sesshoumaru sighed. “The name will be familiar to you. We are seeking an audience with the great Bokusenou.”

              She could barely stifle her gasp. “Bokusenou,” she repeated, his name almost like a prayer, recalling his role in Rin’s story from so long ago. “But why are we trying to impress him? I thought you were on good terms?”

              “Hence the contrition and obeisance,” Sesshoumaru murmured, and their momentum through the sky increased so quickly that Kagome stumbled into his chest. She took her cue. No more words exchanged between them for the remainder of the trip. When they landed, Sesshoumaru even had to redo her hair. He did explain further, though. “When I last came to see him, to inquire as to the Jewel, I was not in the best humour, and may have antagonized him greatly. He may have nothing to say to us, petty thing that he can be at times.”

              Kagome swallowed her giggles, following obediently as he led the way down a surprisingly well-worn path through the dense underbrush.

              A warm, yellow-tinged light drifted in through the canopy, bouncing off dust motes and turning them into sparkles like falling gold-dust. The thicket thinned suddenly, and through the clearing, a tree-trunk as wide as her apartment’s ceiling was high took a place of prominence.

              As they approached, Kagome saw a knot in the wood, and within the knot she could discern a face – rounded brows connecting to a long, straight, and pointed nose, almost bird-like, widely set eyes weighed down by heavy upper lids, and more wrinkles than one would expect, given the smooth surface of the surrounding bark.

              Those eyes raised to behold the pair approaching, and the thin wooden lips parted to release a deep, resonant voice that seemed to echo from within the trunk of the tree.

              “What a solace

              from the loneliness of my home

              are cherries in full bloom--

              bringing those who never visit

              calling at my door.”

              His lips closed on the tail end of the recitation, eyes flitting from Kagome to Sesshoumaru and back, where they eventually fixed, widening slightly to take her in better.

              She stepped up quietly beside Sesshoumaru, and conscious of the deference owed to the ancient being before her, bowed tidily and low.

              “Never visit?” Sesshoumaru scoffed, apparently forfeiting his designs of contrition and obeisance.

              “Indeed, for was not the last time you came tripping over my roots for the sake of the cherries, as well?”

              “Cherries?” Kagome piped in forgetting her appeal to traditional charm.

              Those wizened eyes slid back to her and crinkled a little at the corners. “Yes, and in full bloom.”

              Kagome frowned. “But aren’t you a magnolia tree…?” And nothing need be said that it was long past the flowering time for either cherry blossoms or magnolias.

              “It is as you say, but it is not for  _my_  sake that Sesshoumaru visits, now is it?”

              Oh. Of course. She was even dressed in a sakura-printed kimono. How dumb could she be?

              “Bokusenou.” Sesshoumaru’s voice was impatient, though his expression was as placid and clear as usual.

              “Are you here for the Shikon no Tama yet again, now that its shine cannot be suppressed? Or regarding the illness that has plagued your human and shuttered her spiritual sight? Or… are you here perhaps to seek my blessing in your union, Sesshoumaru?”

              Kagome colored immediately, cheeks matching the red silk of her obi, though Sesshoumaru’s only reaction was the irritated narrowing of his eyes in response to the taunt. “We hope that by addressing the second, we might find a way to do something about the first.”

              “And the last…?”

              “Bokusenou.”

              But instead of commenting on any of their concerns, the ancient tree prevaricated. “How long do you intend to remain?”

              “Three days,” Kagome answered when Sesshoumaru said nothing. He cut her a look of displeasure across the space between them, and she resolved to keep her mouth shut. Traditional. Charm.

              “As it happens,” Bokusenou’s tone became flippant, “I have an answer for each of your questions. One answer for each day. Come back tomorrow in the afternoon. Bring something for the birds.”

              He closed his eyes, and the conversation was over.

              Sesshoumaru said nothing and did nothing to indicate whether he was still annoyed by her interjections, and how her speaking up had led to drawing out their stay. In fact, he seemed rather pleased. He  _had_ said that they may get nothing out of Bokusenou, that he could be petty. So maybe this was a good outcome after all.

              Kagome was breathless by the time Sesshoumaru pulled the last underlayer of her kimono off of her shoulders, but aside from the gentle trailing of his fingertips across her shoulders as he stepped back from her, he did not seek any further contact than the task required.

             

              They fell asleep beside each other in the evening, and awoke in a nostalgic tangle of limbs in the morning.

             

              When they arrived before Bokusenou the second time, Sesshoumaru in the same clothing as the previous day, Kagome in a kimono of navy blue and gray gradient, with a summer festival scene stitched into the hem, detailed with prancing fox demons and their blue-lit lanterns, they each bore a bag of bird feed in both hands.

              Bokusenou’s eyes creaked open, and darted to the side, indicating the place where Sesshoumaru should deposit their precious cargo. Kagome and Bokusenou studied each other as Sesshoumaru moved off to fulfill his task.

              “Tell me what you understand of your situation,” Bokusenou said at length, long after Sesshoumaru had resumed his post at Kagome’s side.

              And so she did. She detailed her symptoms, and how they paralleled Rin’s. She explained her doctor’s comparison to CHYE, and how it had gotten her thinking about the natural instinct of reiki, and the conclusions she had drawn about how youki and reiki were oil and water, and that the ‘rejection of natural instincts’ that had caused her powers to withdraw was the refusal to use it with intent to harm when presented with so much youki. Her retelling started off stuttering and unsure, but as she warmed to her subject, her confidence grew, and her eyes sparkled with conviction the longer she spoke.

              Bokusenou seemed impressed, the corners of his thin lips curling up in a small smile. He looked to Sesshoumaru for a scant second to say, “quite the intelligent young lady,” before returning his regard to her face.

              Finished in his appreciation, his eyes squinted in thought as he turned over her words. The wind rustled the canopy above them, sending a handful of leaves drifting to the ground around their feet.

              “You mention asking yourself what reiki is meant to do, what it is. Did you arrive upon an answer?”

              Kagome chewed on her lip. She shifted her weight. “Not really.”

              “Not really, or not at all?”

              “Not a good one,” she revised. “Not one that didn’t rely on youki to help define it. I could only ever define it in the context of the other.”

              Bokusenou blinked, long and slow. “And is that not a ‘good’ answer? Reiki does not exist in isolation. It exists in opposition.” Kagome nodded in reluctant acknowledgement, but not in satisfaction. “Perhaps you were not aware that in addition to being in a state of opposition, the two can also be said to be in a state of interdependence?”

              Her lashes fluttered as her eyes opened wide. “Are you talking about dualism? Yin and Yang?” Bokusenou said nothing and she shot a look to Sesshoumaru, whose facial expression was equally blank. “But that can’t be right. One can’t exist without the other. But the one thing everyone keeps saying is that there’s no more reiki left in the world.”

              “That’s not quite it, is it?” Bokusenou corrected kindly. “Merely that it has been lost to humanity, that humanity has lost touch with it. Its presence in the world remains. A shockingly disproportionate amount resides within you. And an even more shockingly disproportionate amount sits trapped within the little bauble around your neck.”

              Her fingers reached up to clutch around the pink stone, feeling its warming touch under her palm. She turned over what she had just learned, chewing on the inside of her cheek for several minutes as she pictured the yin yang symbol. She imagined the swell of youki pressing against the diminished, tail end of reiki. More yang than yin. In a healthy, counterbalanced relationship, yin and yang must wax and wane in proportion. When she pictured the youki and reiki again, in terms of what it had actually been doing, she saw the yang pushing harder, and the yin drawing further and further away without a reciprocal swell.

              “Can it really be that simple…?” Kagome asked, vision focusing away from the middle distance and onto the tip of the magnolia tree’s beaky nose.

              “What is your conclusion?”

               _That this is all my own stupid fault._  “That I’ve been so worried about harming others, that I turned the harm on myself. I controlled my reiki into oblivion. I shut off my own tap.” She took a shuddering breath in. “Is it too late to fix it, do you think?” She squeezed the Shikon within her hand, fingers turning white.

              “Not in the face of absolute commitment to the solution.” His eyes narrowed now, a wily gleam within them that she had never seen before. “What is  _your_  solution, then?”

              She hummed through the many answers that popped to the forefront of her mind before at last settling on one. “…Reciprocal action.”

              Bokusenou hummed low, a pleased curve in the line of his lips. He turned to Sesshoumaru then, saying simply, “Fiji water. Lots of it.” And then he closed his eyes.

              That night, after a ten course kaiseki meal, Sesshoumaru and Kagome lounged on their secluded balcony in their yukata, bodies tucked in to each other on the sleek love-seat, skin damp from the summer heat and the steam of the  _routenburo_  beside them. He didn’t join her when she said she would enjoy the bath, but when she climbed into bed an hour later, his kiss was leisurely, and he clutched her close to him. They awoke barely having moved at all.

              “What of the Shikon no Tama,” Sesshoumaru demanded, having poured fifty liters of Fiji brand water around the roots at the base of Bokusenou’s trunk, the plastic containers now strung together and tidily in a row awaiting a return to town for proper disposal. Kagome, resplendent in a furisode in deep green and pale yellow with paper cranes cascading over the shoulder toward the hem, stood quietly beside him, her hands demurely clasped before her. Traditional charm, she reminded herself, knowing that Sesshoumaru would have a much harder time than she had, in procuring information.

              “Have you asked your human if she has any ideas?”

              Sesshoumaru’s scoff made Kagome bristle enough to forget her resolve not to chime in. But at least she did it in a way that was supportive. “I know we can’t destroy it, at least not by breaking it or burning it. I would assume that to be rid of it the energy has to  _go_  somewhere. But I wouldn’t know how to accomplish that.” His neutrality irked her, so she added on, “is it true that it can grant a wish?”

              Bokusenou laughed. Sesshoumaru stepped closer to her and put a quelling hand on her shoulder. Apparently, her mission to annoy him had succeeded. “I have given great thought to the Shikon no Tama over the course of the centuries,” Bokusenou remarked. “And my little birds have brought me intelligence from the furthest reaches of this land. I am afraid to say that there is no certain solution to the problem presented to you.” Kagome opened her mouth to protest, but he pressed on. “I can, however, offer what I hope to be guidance. The Shikon no Tama was, itself, created as a solution to an unresolvable conflict.”

              He explained at length the story of Midoriko, a Miko of great renown, her perfect strength and conviction, and her battle against the demon-of-demons, scourge of his time. How they had crossed swords many times over many years, neither ever claiming a victory that could last. How, impatient to see the bloodshed end, Midoriko had devised a trap: to cage her nemesis away, their spirits forever to be locked in battle, to spare the rest of the world the fallout.

              “Once the Jewel has been purified, and thereby returned to its original state,” Bokusenou concluded – something which could only come about were Kagome to regain her reiki – “then what you will have before you is a treasure box. And within it, two forces, in perfect opposition.”

              Kagome looked up at Sesshoumaru. Neither of them had missed the significance of the magnolia tree’s wording. Sesshoumaru’s brow was furrowed, golden eyes focused intently on her face as he considered Bokusenou’s guidance and the subtext that had gone unsaid. “Opposition and interdependence,” he murmured, gently tightening his hold on her shoulder.

              “Two forces within, two forces without,” Bokusenou replied. “If that should fail you could always try to make a wish on it, though I doubt very much that either of the two inside should care a jot for your desires. I will continue yet to ruminate on the subject. Perhaps I will arrive at another, more promising possibility.”

              Sesshoumaru stepped toward Kagome and slid his hand to her opposite shoulder, bringing her in for an unexpected and tender embrace.  He turned his head toward the tree then, and, surprising her yet again, said simply, “you have my thanks.”

              “Potatoes,” Bokusenou demanded, unimpressed, and closed his eyes.

             

              They returned to the hotel, both brimming with satisfaction. Sesshoumaru’s hand on her knee was in perpetual motion throughout the drive, thumb stroking the inside of her thigh. Dinner was suffused with a sort of companionable contentment, tension eased from the night prior. By now, they had gotten used to spending so much time in each other’s presence again.

              “Bokusenou expects that I deliver his potatoes,” Sesshoumaru commented, leisurely in his yukata where he sat on the cushions on the balcony, a cup of sweet sake in his hand.

              Kagome turned from where she sat in the bath, propping her head on her forearms to look at him as he spoke. “For fertilizer?”

              “Hn.” He rolled his neck. “It would be wise to follow through, or risk his further displeasure on my next visit.”

              “This time wasn’t so bad, though, was it?” she asked, scooping water from the bath and pouring it over her shoulders and onto her back.

              “In deference to your presence, I expect,” Sesshoumaru replied. He stood and ambled over to the side of the  _routenburo_. With a preternatural grace, he lowered himself to his knees before her, coming to her eye level, and handed her his cup of sake. Obediently, Kagome took a sip. His eyes lingered on her face, drifting down to her lips, raking over her dewy, reddened cheeks.

              Slowly, deliberately, he set the cup down on the edge of the bath before framing her face with his hands. His thumb caressed her lower lip for a moment before he leaned in for a sake-sweetened kiss. First one, then another. Kagome met his kisses, more lips than tongue, her own small hands coming up to close around his biceps, a heady, hazy arousal beginning to coil in her belly.

              “I will have to go into town to procure them,” he murmured, moving his lips to press more kisses to her cheeks, the line of her jaw, her throat, the tender skin behind her ear. “You sleep in. I will go and be back by the time you are ready to leave.”

              Kagome nodded her assent, and he pulled away, moving into the bedroom.

              They didn’t make love that night, but he held her close, and his lips and fingers came to know her body again in a way that they hadn’t for months.

              When Kagome awoke in the morning, she was alone in the hotel room. She dressed, packed her bag, tidied up the room, all the while remembering the joyous reunion of their flesh the night previous.

              It occurred to her, belatedly, that there was no reason that they couldn’t have gone to see Bokusenou together.

              There was plenty of time to make the drive back to Tokyo.

              But then she remembered that there had been a third question, and a part of her wondered, and maybe even hoped a little, that he had gone in privacy to get his answer.

 

-+-

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Act II AN: Not gonna lie, ya’ll, thinking up medical explanations for youkai ailments may have been more fun/work than expected. Did you note the jab at the lazy researcher? I wonder who that could refer to! Also I know it got a little angsty there for a spell but, like, she’s been really sick, and relationships are hard. Especially when you’re with a perfect, possibly eternal being with a totally reasonable fear of commitment.  
> Footnotes:  
> [1] Wearing Kimono… is actually an art. You gotta know what you’re doing. It was a bit tedious to write about so I skipped a lot of the detail, but… https://japanese-kimono.net/how-to-wear-kimono/


	9. Act III, Part I: A Thing You Have Lost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this was late; a lot of bad things have been happening to the people in my life recently, and it’s been hard to concentrate on anything else. Anyway, here it is.
> 
> TW for violence.

 

-+-

 

**Han-Kichi : An Omikuji Epilogue**

Act Three

In Three Parts

 

-+-

I

失せ物  A Thing You Have Lost: You will find it if you search for it.

             

              There is, of course, a marked difference between knowing what needs to be done, and managing its execution. In theory, her solution was rather simple. So simple, it could be described in two words: reciprocal action. But of course, it was never going to be as easy as all that.

              Youki and reiki, oppositional and interdependent. Sesshoumaru pushed, and she never really pushed back for fear of harming him or others. That had been the main motivator behind her practice with Ikami-san, after all. But fear of causing harm had caused her to throttle her own powers – choke the life out of them. So, _in theory_ , when presented with a push, Kagome should just _push back._ Reciprocal action. And then, ta-da! Problem solved.

              Just how the fuck to manage that when she had essentially cut off her pushing mechanism… that was beyond her.

              But Bokusenou had said that she would succeed if she was absolutely committed to her solution. So she would do it, somehow.

              Just not yet.

              Kagome went back to work at her internship the very next day after their return to Tokyo, and was rather busy with that and working on her dissertation. She didn’t get to see him much; they got back into a steady rhythm of texting and phone calls, and made plans to meet on the weekends, but once or twice a week never felt like enough. She was excessively pleased that Sesshoumaru did not rush, pressure, or even ask her about their discussions in the woods, apparently holding true to his promise that no matter the outcome, his feelings for her would remain unchanged. Whatever those affections might be.

              When school started again, just as August turned over into September, Kagome finally felt like she had a little more leeway, what with the gaps built into her school day, to get her work done during office hours, and this freed her evenings up to ponder the two concerns that were nearest and dearest to her heart: Reciprocal Action, of course, and Sesshoumaru.

              Undoubtedly, any person that liked men would be content to sit and ruminate over Sesshoumaru and his perfections for hours at a time, for indeed they were numerous. But instead of sighing in delight over his pale lashes, or the exact shade of gold of his eyes, or the impossibly soft texture of his hair, Kagome found herself distracted by contemplations of a weightier kind.

              “It’s hard to put it into words,” Kagome explained, staring at her own fingers as they interlocked, palms pressing together, over the mosaic-tiled top of the little bistro table before her.

              Yura’s reply was to say nothing but hum in appreciation, or perhaps commiseration. Because matters of the heart _were_ difficult to put into words. She took a bite of her pastry, chewing thoughtfully, eyeing Kagome over the sugar-dusted dough. When, at length, Kagome continued to say nothing at all, Yura set her pastry down on the little white porcelain plate. “We don’t have to talk about it, Kagome-chan,” she offered. “We can just be bimbos together and go get our nails done and have a ladies’ day. We don’t need to talk about hard things.”

              Her laugh was a little breathless as she grimaced up at Yura through her bangs. “It feels like that’s all I ever do nowadays!” Her chuckles tapered off to a sigh, and her lips firmed in determination. “Do you mind if I do want to talk about it, though? I was honestly hoping… maybe you’d be able to give me a little insight?”

              “What are girlfriends for?” Yura replied. “Would this be easier over alcohol instead of coffee?”

              Kagome pursed her lips. “Easier, maybe, but probably less productive.”

              “I don’t see why we can’t do both,” Yura retorted cheekily, before flagging down the waiter to order two Irish coffees. “One shot of booze can only help.”

              They whiled the time waiting for the delivery of their drinks looking at pictures of Yura and Ichiro’s most recent vacation up north. Kagome stared down at a photo of her cousin, a goofy grin on his face, cheeks red with exertion, striking the dorkiest pose after summiting on a hike. She couldn’t resist asking what Yura saw in him, and was startled into laughter again when Yura wistfully waved her fingers and said that he had the nicest hair.

              “Two Irish coffees,” the waiter announced, setting the steaming mugs down in front of them. The moment he’d made himself scarce, Yura cocked a questioning brow at Kagome, beckoning for her to resume the previous topic of conversation.

              “You know how we kind of fell out a little, before?”

              “A little?” Yura scoffed. “Didn’t you avoid him for like a month?”

              “I wasn’t _avoiding him_ ,” Kagome groused, but didn’t elaborate. “It seems like such a dumb reason to have a fight.” She paused. Yura knew about what happened: how Sesshoumaru had been open to meeting her family, but hadn’t even considered introducing her to his. “I feel like things have changed a little since then…?”

              “Like, for the better?” There was a little powdered sugar on the corner of Yura’s lips but it was cute and Kagome wasn’t going to say anything about it yet.

              “Yeah, mostly.” She explained: “We had to be really careful when we started seeing each other in person again, you know, because of the whole illness situation. Very short meetings, in public, very clinical and superficial, just to see each other. But over the phone and text it was just like before. Warm, close. Good.” She sighed. “I had a panic attack when…” she waved a hand through the air and Yura hummed lowly, as though acknowledging a loss, “and he was, like, super supportive? Without prompting. Which was unbelievably great and also just wholly unexpected.”

              Yura blinked. “It was unexpected that he would be supportive?”

              Kagome shook her head. “No—I mean. Just. I feel like before, I’ve had to come to him with my concerns, usually when I can’t take it anymore, and whatever support I’ve gotten has been, like… just enough. This was different though. I felt like he was really _paying attention_ to what I was going through, and intuiting how I’d be feeling about it, and what anxiety spirals I was falling into, and he took the initiative to say something about it before it became _a thing_ , and he actually went even further than that and—”

              Yura cut her off. “That’s _so impressive_ Kagome-chan but what did he actually say?”

              “Like, so, basically he said, ‘correct me if I’m wrong, but seems to me that you’re worried about some stuff, so I just want to say that whether what Bokusenou tells us is helpful in recovering your reiki or not, my affections for you won’t change.’ And he like, commended my _strength of spirit_. And I hadn’t even said anything about being worried about anything like that.”

              “Correct me if I’m wrong…?” Yura repeated in a whisper, utterly gobsmacked.

              “Honestly, part of me wonders if he’s seeing a therapist too.”

              At this, Yura snapped out of her stupor and laughed outright. “No, Kagome-chan.”

              “You don’t think so?”

              “Obviously I don’t know the man, but I know enough _about_ him to know that seeking that kind of assistance would be considered admitting to a weakness, Kagome-chan, and you and I both know what he feels about _that_.” She touched her hand to her face, finally noted the powdered sugar, and, shooting a scornful look at Kagome, reached for her napkin to wipe it off. “Stupidly outdated thought that it is, of course.”

              Kagome gave her an impish grin, but conceded her point with a shrug of her shoulders. “Okay, but he’s also, like, letting me see more of the side of his life that isn’t constructed for human consumption, you know? I feel like maybe he’s letting me in a little?” She paused. “He was just so clear about his reservations, before, that he wasn’t ready for me to be a part of his life. It’s why we had that whole stupid argument, because it hadn’t even _occurred_ to him to introduce me to his family; that’s how separate he had me from his actual life. But it’s different now, somehow and— I don’t know. If he’s not seeing a therapist, then something must have happened, but for the life of me I can’t think what.”

              “But that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Yura asked, leaning across the table. “He’s letting you in. Why analyze it to death? Why not just let it be ‘a good thing’?”

              Another sigh. _Been doing that a lot lately_. “Because it’s such a big change in behavior all of a sudden. And because I don’t know the cause, I’m just terrified that I’ll do something or say something and it’ll go back to the way it was before.”

              Yura frowned, leaned back in her chair. She tapped her neatly manicured fingertips against the tabletop rhythmically for a moment, jaw working as though chewing on a thought. “Are you guys having sex?”

              Kagome colored prettily. “We’re—we haven’t, since the fight. We make out a lot,” Kagome offered, hopefully, “but he never lets things get that heated, recently.”

              “Hmm.”

              Yura’s jaw kept working, her nails kept tapping, and she leaned her chair to balance on just the rear two legs, rocking a little back and forth. Clutching at the Shikon no Tama on its silver chain, gripping it so that her knuckles turned a bright white, Kagome waited for elaboration. But Yura said nothing. Just kept chewing, tapping, rocking. This, of course, made Kagome fall entirely apart in anxiety. “‘Hmm’? What does that mean?” she practically wailed when she could bear the suspense no longer.

              At this, Yura looked up at her, righting her chair. She shrugged. “I dunno. I don’t get dogs.”

              Kagome’s jaw dropped open with the anti-climax.

              “I would just talk to him about it,” Yura recommended, ignoring the way Kagome’s teeth clamped tightly closed. “It seems like he’s particularly open to things now, so he’d probably be good about talking through it if you needed him to.” She took a considering sip of her boozed-up coffee, watching Kagome’s frustration melt back into melancholy.

              “Yeah,” Kagome murmured, holding back the small exhalation that was working its way forward. “It’s just the kind of conversation that can sound like an ultimatum, you know? And I don’t want things to end.”

              “But they can’t go on like this either, can they?” Yura reasoned gently. “It’s clear that you care about each other. But relationships don’t work on depth of feeling alone, Kagome-chan. Especially not ones between humans and youkai.” She reached across the bistro table and gently placed her hand over Kagome’s, communicating through touch what she could no longer communicate to Kagome through her youki. “If you don’t work things out, they’ll end anyway, sooner or later.”

              “Yeah,” Kagome repeated forlornly, and brought her coffee to her lips.

              The conversation stayed with her for the weeks that followed. Every weekend that passed with Sesshoumaru holding her close but eschewing their former physical intimacy, Kagome’s resolve to raise the topic returned anew, but by the next time they managed to meet, she lost her chutzpah, and was left to just hope that things would go back to the way they were, only to be disappointed yet again. It wasn’t until the first weekend in October, when second semester finally began, and she was readying herself for her classes, that it dawned on her just _how long_ they had been in this holding pattern.

              Just over 6 months.

              _What_.

              After dinner, early in October, as they sat across from each other, wine glasses in hand, he reached over the table to lightly grasp her hand. As it turns out, that little gesture was all the reassurance she needed to begin to unburden herself.

              “We should probably talk through some things together,” she managed, voice a little choked with the effort.

              Sesshoumaru leaned back in his chair slightly; his hand moved back too, but his fingers kept in gentle contact with her own. “Hn,” was his agreement.

              She looked down at their hands, then back up at him. Neither moved or spoke. “About us, I mean,” she clarified, hoping for some further reaction.

              “That was my assumption.”

              “Okay.”

              Okay.

              So it was ‘blood from a stone’ Sesshoumaru, rather than ‘proactively communicate’ Sesshoumaru. Her dismay must have shown on her face, because he leaned forwards again and wrapped his hand around hers. A comforting gesture, even if his facial expression was closed off and he continued to give her nothing verbal to work with. How to open this discussion? How to not sound accusatory? _Ugh, fuuuuuuuuuuuck I should have thought this through better before I opened my stupid mouth._

              “Are you happy with the way things are?” she eventually ventured.  

              “In asking me this, I infer you are not.”

              She frowned. “That’s a non-answer, Sesshoumaru.”

              “But correct nonetheless?”           

               There was an iciness in his voice that she hadn’t heard in a long time; one that he had never directed to her. It surprised her, and confused her. “I…” she sighed. “I am happy about my choice in partner,” she offered, moving her hand in his grasp to wind her fingers together with his. “I’m unhappy with some of the circumstances around us. I think there are things we could be doing better at, as a couple.” As she spoke, the chill seemed to ebb away, his gaze softening once more to the affectionate regard she’d gotten used to. “What about you?”

              He blinked. Had he forgotten he would still be expected to answer the original question? “I too am content with my chosen partner, and discontented by surrounding circumstance.”

              “Okay,” she acknowledged. He reached for his wine, she did the same. “How about we talk about some of those circumstances.”

              His hand slowly unraveled from hers. “Perhaps the couch might be more comfortable,” he offered before she could take offense. She trailed after him to the living room, wine in hand, mind whirring on how just to explain what was going through her head.

              “Well,” she started, settling into the cushions on what had become her designated spot. “Let’s take turns?” He nodded. “I’ll start. Okay. Um.” Something easy. “I don’t always understand your motivations for doing things…” she reminded him of his verbal reassurance of his affections, in the car, after the last remaining reiki disappeared. “That’s only the second time you’ve talked about your feelings about me.”

              He tilted his head. “Do you require a greater frequency?”

              “If you don’t tell me, I won’t know,” she said slowly.

              “So demonstrations are insufficient,” he replied, just as slowly, brow drawn, puzzling. A look of understanding, after a moment. “You require verbal reinforcement.”

              Kagome blinked. “Demonstrations?”

              Sesshoumaru drew himself up beside her, looking into her face, his confusion plain to see. “I have claimed you as mine repeatedly before others,” he started, and watching her eyebrows climb, narrowed his gaze, as though trying to see directly into her skull. “Your tutor, Ikami… your physician… Bokusenou…?” he offered. When she merely blinked again, he sat back, at a loss.

              “So…” Kagome took in his affronted expression and reached out, putting her hand on his knee, trying to assuage him. “Maybe I took it for granted that you knew about how humans date.”

              “What need would one such as I have had to note human courtship rituals?” he almost spat, the haughtiness in his voice somehow endearing himself to her, when it should probably have felt cutting.

              “Not made note of, but like, inadvertently learned about. Through osmosis. Since you’re surrounded by us.” His lips firmed in a moue of displeasure. “I guess I underestimated how below your notice humanity really is.” A pause. “I think it’s also fair to say that I probably should have done more to learn about how youkai go about things, too.”

              At this concession, some of his frigidity dissipated.

              “When humans are in love, we say so. It’s kind of a big deal,” she added, lightly. The iciness returned; his expression darkened, and he leaned away from her. Floundering, she asked, “and youkai?”

              “Demonstrations.” His voice was clipped, and he avoided her gaze; any joy she would ordinarily have felt at this indirect expression of love turned to ashes in her mouth. Why was he so upset?

              “Did I say something…?” she tried to catch his gaze.

              His lips tightened. “No.” When he turned to look at her, it was as though she were looking at a stranger. There was such a coolness, such a distance so close to disdain in his expression that she almost lost her breath. “You have said _nothing at all_.”

              You have said—

              _Oh_.

              “Oh.” The tension mounting within her melted away in an instant as realization dawned. “Sesshoumaru, _I_ _love you_.”

              The transformation was instantaneous. Icy gold turned molten; the tension around his eyes and mouth disappeared. His hand covered hers where it lay on his knee. “Hn,” he said, eyes flickering away from her, a little smile playing on his lips. They basked in the happiness of the moment in silence, connected by the touch of their hands, the synchronicity of their breathing.  

              When he turned to look at her again, the little smile had faded a touch. “Were there other concerns you wanted to address?”

              For a split-second Kagome weighed whether she wanted to ruin the good mood between them by having more relationship talks, but she landed on nodding her head ‘yes’. _Best to clear the air. Relationships don’t work on love alone,_ she reminded herself. “We—we haven’t… you know, _been_ _intimate_ in months…?” She trailed off, hoping she wouldn’t have to clarify why that concerned her.

              He dipped his chin in acknowledgement. “You had been grieving,” he explained. Suddenly, he was avoiding her gaze. “Subsequently, I felt it would be too much of a distraction.”

              “A distraction?”

              “Indeed.” Maybe it was better when he was avoiding her eyes; now he was looking right at her and the intensity of his gaze could have bored a hole directly through her skull. “You have lacked focus in the tasks Bokusenou set before you, since our return.”

              “Oh.” His hand squeezed hers, as she blinked. “Right.” When he continued to stare at her, she added, “I’ll get on that, then.”

 

              The first attempt was a blatant wash. The morning following their relationship talk was spent in deep conversation about the plan of action. Kagome kept getting hung up on _how exactly_ she was meant to push back when she couldn’t feel him pushing in the first place, couldn’t figure out where to push from herself. Discussion was fruitless, and the attempt even more so.

             

              They tried again the next weekend.

              “This is madness,” Kagome groaned. “We’ve been sitting here staring at each other for an hour. No amount of meditation is going to make this work, Sesshoumaru.”

              His eyes popped open.

              “Maybe it’s my fault,” she groused. “Bokusenou said ‘absolute commitment to the solution’, and I just don’t think this is the right way to go about things.”

              His eyes narrowed, considering her words, peering at her. “Do you have an alternative to propose?”

              Kagome laughed, derision dripping from her voice. “Not at all.” She scooted forward. “I don’t think keeping sex as an incentive is working though, Sesshoumaru.”

              Slowly, his head tilted to the side, as though he were deep in thought. “It is perhaps insufficient…?”

              “No, it’s just a distraction!” Now her laugh was sincere.

              A languorous blink, though it was clear he was still deep in thought. The relaxing of the little squint he had been peering at her from, the insidious casualness of his posture, and his “perhaps it is,” told her that he had made his mind up about something.

              But before she could ask, he had swept her up and carried her into his bedroom, kicking the door closed behind them.

 

 

              Kagome, much refreshed after the renewal of their amorous activities, spent her free time that week kicking around ideas on how exactly she might rise to Bokusenou’s challenge. She needed a plan that she could _commit to_ , completely. But what exactly that might entail… nobody that she turned to for ideas seemed to have anything of substance to contribute.

              By the time the weekend rolled around, at long last, her spirits were pre-emptively lowered, ready to be disappointed yet again.

              Sesshoumaru texted her early Friday morning and instructed her to pack a weekend bag. Maybe he’d had some kind of inspiration?

              She had a meeting that afternoon with Ueda-sensei that turned out to be unexpectedly brief. “Well, Higurashi-kun,” he said, adjusting his spectacles with one hand and scratching at his stubbly chin with the other, “Myouga-sensei tells me that you’re off this weekend to assist him with a quick work trip, something to do with his private research?”

              “Ah…” Taken entirely by surprise, she could manage no more than a garbled “yeah.”

              Ueda-sensei grunted. “Well, your paper is coming along, and you’ll have time to finish your coursework?” At Kagome’s nod, he wiggled his fingers in the air. “Run along then. We’ll see you when you get back on Wednesday.”

              _Wednesday?_

              In a daze, Kagome stumbled out of his office. Sesshoumaru was leaning against the opposite wall. “Whatever clothing you have packed will more than suffice,” he supplied, and she followed him helplessly out of the building. His car was parked in the teacher lot, in one of the priority spaces. He took her bag from her shoulder and popped it into his trunk before catching her fingers to lead her around to the passenger side and hand her into the car.

              “If I’m going to help Myouga-sensei,” her voice was sugar sweet, “why are _you_ driving me?”

              “I am taking you to his residence, of course, as he has left campus already.”

              “Nice of you to go out of your way,” she murmured.

              “Indeed.” He spared her a sideways glance, his eyes twinkling with good humor.

              “I take it you’ve come up with something?”

              He maneuvered the car out of its spot. “It is possible that I may have.”

              “Care to share?”

              “Not in the least,” was his reply, coupled once more with a laughing look in her direction.

              Kagome leaned her head against the window. His driving was as assertive as he was, but she felt comfortable and safe with him behind the wheel. He took them onto the highway, heading west. “Will you tell me at least where we’re going?”

              For a long time, he didn’t even acknowledge that she’d spoken. Eventually, his grip tightened a little on the wheel. “Have you been told much of my family?”

              She blinked. “Almost nothing at all.” She paused. “Ikami-san mentioned that your father was a Daiyoukai, that your family line has had considerable influence – in the West at first, and more and more globally.”

              “Yes,” he breathed. “We have stood at the apex for millennia, and have called the Western territories our home for longer even than that.”

              _Millennia._

              “I am taking you to one of our ancestral holdings.” He glanced at her, lips tight, and she heard his throat click as he swallowed. “As a pup, I played there often in the summer time; I spent several years there sequestered in training as an adolescent. I have not returned there since the passing of my sire.”

              Kagome wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that, so she reached across the console and gripped his knee gently.

              The remainder of the drive passed in a comfortable quiet, as Kagome nodded off.

              When she awoke, the sun had risen, and she lay in a disheveled yukata, sprawled on top of a traditional futon on a tatami mat floor in a simple, square room. One of the walls was made of fusuma, the thick paper on the sliding doors painted in gold and depicting scenes of mountains and youkai, two were sliding shoji rice paper screens; a corner room, then. The décor was simple and traditional, a small tokonoma alcove on the one solid wall, an arrangement of flowers on a raised platform within the alcove, with a beautifully painted scroll hanging on the wall behind it.

              Sesshoumaru was nowhere to be seen.

              At the foot of her futon was a pile of neatly folded clothes, a small note centered on top. “Meet me in the garden once you’ve dressed,” she read aloud. She looked down at the outfit provided. White Kimono, deep green hakama, white tabi socks, matching green obi, and a white haori to keep out the chill. She frowned in thought. Just what did Sesshoumaru have planned?

              The answer became evident the moment she entered the back garden. There were a number of targets set up at incrementally greater distances; Sesshoumaru, in his white and red traditional clothes, stood before the furthest one, plucking arrows from where they had become embedded in the wood. Once he’d set everything to rights, he approached her, circling her once and making little adjustments to her clothing.

              “Have you ever practiced archery before?” his voice was soft.

              “Never,” she replied, looking up at his inscrutable expression.

              He explained that its meditative qualities and physicality made it particularly appropriate for her, as well as the bow’s history as the weapon of choice for Miko.

              Kagome accepted this with a nod. “I admit I’m a little confused, though,” she said, once he had placed the bow in her hands. “We haven’t been having much success with meditation so far.”

              Sesshoumaru’s head was turned toward the horizon, as though lost in thought. The breeze fluttered his loose hair. When he looked down at her, he was still somehow distant. “It is not merely for the meditation,” he reiterated. “The use of reiki is strongly associated with the exertion of the body.” He blinked, slow. “You yourself, tapped into reserves of power quite foreign to you and unprecedented in my experience, when battling to save your life.” When she had fought back her surprise enough to nod, he added, “It is my hope that this might give you an outlet for those instincts.”

              Kagome looked down at the bow in her hands, fingered the smoothness of the wood. She wasn’t a fool; smooth it may be, but she would be returning home with some mean blisters on her hands, she was certain of it. When she looked up at Sesshoumaru again, there was something in his eyes that unsettled her deeply, but she was hard-pressed to put a name to what exactly it was. “Is something wrong?”

              He reached for her, brushing a knuckle against her cheek in a tender gesture at odds with the assessing, focused look on his face. “You know I would never hurt you.”

              “I know that,” she replied, less firmly than intended.

              “Causing harm does not come naturally to you,” he continued, “you are kind-hearted.” A pause, as a particularly strong breeze batted against them. “I expect that if we are to succeed, you must overcome that reservation.” He moved his hand down to hers and closed it tighter around the bow. “Come.”

              She didn’t have time to try and unpack his words.

              By the time night fell, her hands and fingers worn and tired and covered in hotspots, her shoulders and back aching, body and mind exhausted, she barely managed to stumble into the room and collapse onto the futon before falling into a deep and dreamless sleep.

              The next day was no different. Sesshoumaru was a task master, she knew, and even then she could tell that he was taking it easy on her.

              The morning of the following day, however, he woke her gently, his dexterous fingers kneading into her overtired muscles, relieving the soreness that had accumulated from two days’ hard training at acquiring a new and deceptively difficult skill.

              “Good morning,” she murmured, face half-buried in her pillow.

              He paused in his ministrations before returning her greeting in kind. Leaning down, he pressed a kiss to her temple, and let his lips linger over the shell of her ear. “I want you to take the morning to recover,” he murmured. “We will resume activities in the afternoon.”

              “You’re having me rest up?” Kagome replied, turning over her shoulder to look at him, a sly smile on her face. “You have something planned, don’t you?”

              “I will neither confirm nor deny,” he murmured, kissing her again. “You have until three this afternoon to be entirely at your leisure. Come find me then.”

              “Where do I go?”

              One of his eyebrows inched upwards. “I have every faith you will figure it out.” His words were flippant but his gaze was intense. When she opened her mouth to voice a protest, he pressed his finger to her parted lips and shook his head. “You will find me. Of that, I have no doubt.” He left the room near-soundlessly, the door sliding closed behind him with an almost imperceptible click.

              She had remarkably little trouble stifling her intrigue for the duration of the morning. A long soak in the hot spring bath, shaded by Japanese Maple leaves, was followed by a delicious snooze in the sun on the grass outside their little room, wrapped in thick blankets to stave off a brisk breeze. She spent a long time stretching her aching muscles after waking, rolling out the kinks on a foam roller that appeared to have been acquired specifically for her benefit, still in its glossy packaging.

              When the appointed hour drifted close, Kagome wandered back into her room and was unsurprised to find a stack of neatly folded clothing on top of the futon. She recognized the outfit immediately: the red hakama and white kimono of a Miko. A matching haori. Her bow and a quiver of arrows were laid out neatly. It felt a little odd, donning the garb of a profession that she didn’t quite belong to, but it _had_ been laid out for her, after all.

              The second the clock on her phone ticked over to three o’clock, Kagome tossed the device onto the bed and walked back outside into the sunshine. ‘Come find me,’ he had said, but had not given any hints as to where to go.

              She first tried the archery range, only to find it eerily empty.

              That having been her only real lead, Kagome wandered aimlessly around, staying fairly near the house, traversing ground they had walked together in the past days. But he was nowhere. The hedges and trees were too high to see over; growing frustrated, Kagome pushed her way through a gate to the outer gardens, which were much less like gardens and more like wild wood.

              Like the archery range, the wood too was eerily quiet; the breeze cut through the trees, knocking leaves and branches about, but there was no bird-song, no animal noises. Like the calm before the storm. An eerie sense of déjà vu descended over her, an unsettled, anxious energy filling her the way it had as she had traversed the wood through the park on the way to the cavern where she eventually met with Naraku—where she eventually died at his hands.

              But he was gone. No such end awaited her this time. She knew it, and yet, the bubbling unease in her gut only seemed to intensify with each step Kagome took away from the gate to the inner garden.

              Ahead of her, Kagome spotted a break in the trees. Quickening her pace, she broke off the path and cut through the thicket to the clearing. She stumbled over a prominent root, falling to her knees onto packed dirt and sparse grass. With a wince, she rubbed her knees as she came back up to her feet, then dusted the forest litter from her hakama before straightening.

              When her eyes focused ahead of her, she lost her breath.

              The clearing itself was narrow but ran down a ways, meeting with and following along the banks of a stream, nothing particularly interesting of itself. The trees on the far side of the stream grew tall, pulling away from the water.

              And in the distance, rising above the horizon, was the giant looming figure of a white-furred inuyoukai, so vast in scale it might have been a mountain. Its tail, long-haired, floated in the air like a fluffy white cloud, held aloft high enough to disperse the actual clouds condensed in the blue. Her eyes trailed it from the tip of its tail toward its massive head, heart stuttering in her chest as it turned to face her.

              Eyes.

              Red eyes. Glossy, unblinking eyes.

              And as they fixed on her, she saw teeth.

              Kagome shuddered. A slow step back. Fingers reaching for her bow.

              _That’s Sesshoumaru_ , she reminded herself, sucking in a breath. The inuyoukai’s lip curled, exposing its giant, jagged fangs. A low rumbling growl vibrated the foliage around her, pebbles kicking up from the forest floor as it quaked beneath her.

              _That’s Sesshoumaru_ , she reminded herself, gripping hard onto the wooden bow in her hands.

              When his massive paw picked up and came down again, it crushed trees below it like blades of grass, and the earth pitched and rumbled below, knocking her off her balance and sending her tumbling to the forest floor.

              She picked herself up with alacrity once the rumbling stopped, casting her eyes to the horizon, desperate to keep him in her sights.

              But he was gone.

              The silence and stillness had settled around her once more, and the bubbling cauldron of nerves within her threatened to overflow.

              Kagome readied her bow, pulled an arrow from her quiver, and took a tentative step backward. She hadn’t been counting on having to remember her route through the wood – she had figured she would find Sesshoumaru out here and they would go back together. But now, she had the shaky feeling that she would be picking out her path through the foliage on her own.

              She hadn’t made it five steps before the low thrum and oppressive weight of his demonic energy descended upon her and stopped her in her tracks. Certainly she couldn’t _see_ it, the way she used to do, but her skin prickled and her hair stood on end, and the undeniable pressure of it all around her paralyzed her. Pupils dilated in fear, she tracked her eyes from side to side, trying to espy the source of all this terrifying energy.

              One more step backward.

              A twig snapped underfoot.

              Kagome had time enough to suck in a breath, before she felt the rush of wind around her.

              She blinked, and there he stood, not ten paces from her.

              _That’s Sesshoumaru_ , she reminded herself, all the while keenly aware that somehow, it was _not_.

              He had resumed his humanoid youkai form. Though his eyes remained a feral red, there were now blue irises for her to focus on. The markings on his cheeks were jagged and the color was closer to purple than its usual magenta. His posture wasn’t in its usual elegant and aloof upright, but rather, low to the ground, muscles tense, ready to spring forward. And his teeth…

              Kagome raised her bow.

              “Sesshoumaru…?” Her voice a tiny squeak.

              Sesshoumaru raised his chin a fraction, and, nostrils flaring, scented the air. The glass-blue and red of his eyes passed sightlessly over her before fixing on her chest. He could probably _see_ her heart thundering in her chest, not only hear it.

              “Sesshoumaru,” she tried again, voice a little stronger, demanding his attention.

              In answer, a deep growl.

              “Oh,” she let out on a gasp.

              _Oh no._

              She took a step back.

              _That’s **not**_ _Sesshoumaru._

Seized with panic, her numb fingers clenching her bow until her knuckles turned white, skin shining with the sweat of her fear, she turned. Her footfalls were as quick as her heartbeat as she ran blindly through the wood, bow-arm clutched close to her chest and her other braced before her to shove branches out of her path.

              He must have given her a head-start, for if he had really meant to chase her down, she wouldn’t have made the tree-line before he caught her. As it was, it still didn’t take long. A clawed hand gripped the back of her haori and yanked her backward. She dropped the bow – it skipped along the ground and out of reach, as the change in her momentum tossed her through the air like a rag-doll, tumbling over herself onto the packed dirt and pine needles covering the forest floor.

              Everything hurt.

              She barely managed a gasp of pain before he was upon her again. Saliva glistened as it dripped from the points of his canines. His fist in her shirt-front pulled her up and toward him. Violence shined in his narrowed red eyes, promising that her suffering wasn’t yet done.

              “Sesshoumaru,” she pleaded, lips trembling.

              His free hand came up, fingers curled, tips of his claws dripping green, caustic.

              “Stop,” she tried, unable to look away.

              He pulled his hand back, preparing to strike.

              _This is not him_ , she thought, frantic, and screwed her eyes closed. _He won’t stop_. She sucked in a breath, eyes opening again against her will.

              His body tensed.

              _He’s going to kill me!_

              Time slowed.

              Kagome squeezed her eyes shut, reaching with one hand to ward him off. Something within her swelled and pulsed.

 _Stay away_ , her heart cried, _Stay. Away!_

              A dam burst.

              Her eyes opened just in time to see Sesshoumaru’s claws, reaching for her face – at the very same moment – a wash of pink reiki rocketed through her veins to overflow from her fingertips in an explosion of phenomenal force.

              His body flew from hers.

              Kagome toppled backwards. It took the whole second that her body was suspended in the air for her mind to process what she had seen before the impact of her power against him: his eyes had lost their red hue, a pleased and gentle smile curving his lips.

              Her body collided against a tree behind her, head knocking against the trunk. She managed to call his name once more before the world went dark.

 

 

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only two parts to go! Will release the next two parts over the next weeks!
> 
> And the aye’s have it, unanimously! Sesshoumaru’s POV will be next in the works. No guarantees on publication date but I’m shooting for the week of 8/1 or thereabouts.


	10. Act III, Part II: Your Wish

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve uploaded 2 chapters together—make sure you start at chapter 9 (Act III, Part I) first!

-+-

 

**Han-Kichi : An Omikuji Epilogue**

Act Three

In Three Parts

 

-+-

II

願事  Your Wish: Your wish will be realized.

 

              “You said, and I quote, ‘You know I would never hurt you’. You _said that_.”

              Sesshoumaru, where he lay prostrate below her on the futon, threw her a look that was part indulgence and part annoyance. Kagome marveled that he was unwounded – or that by the time she had regained consciousness, his wounds had already healed – when she had been able to bring Naraku near to death with an attack of the same strength. “And _you_ may recall that you came out of that encounter with no injuries of my infliction.”

              Kagome’s lips pursed. She squeezed her quadriceps around him, bringing her knees in closer to his torso, and leaned over to peck him on the forehead. “Yeah, but you went out of your way to _convince me_ that you would, regardless of what you said.”

              His golden eyes stared unblinkingly up at her, his hands slid up her thighs and came to rest on her bottom, pulling her down closer to his body. “If I had not been convincing, I doubt if the venture would have succeeded.”

              Kagome pressed down against him, enjoying the firmness of his hold on her backside. Her hands, now resting on his chest, warmed with the rush of pink-colored energy that flowed with familiar ease to her fingertips. A swirl of green youki rose up to meet it, and the air cracked and popped where the two tides met. “Is that really the best way you could think of?” she asked.

              His grip moved to knead her hips.

              “It was unquestionably effective,” he replied, applying pressure where he held her, moving her against him.

              She recognized a cue if she saw one, and began grinding leisurely into him, hands coming to rest lightly over his. He loosened his grip as he tensed beneath her, hardening in concert to her attentions. Golden eyes fluttered closed in rapture.

              One of his thumbs slid to her midline, moving over the navy-blue gym shorts she had on until it found the apex of her cleft. The gentle, sensuous rhythm he began rubbing over her clothed clit synched with the rocking motion of her hips. A pleasant hum and throb of excitement, beginning at those two points of friction and coiling up into her belly made her reach out to him. She pushed aside the lapels of his kimono, traced a meandering path up his sternum and across his collar bones, and then pressed her hand firmly down over his heart.

              Its steady beating was elevated from the usual. His lashes blinked up as he peeped at her from beneath them, eyes glazed over in a lazy, indulgent lust.

              Kagome couldn’t quite remember ever seeing him like this – simultaneously lax and wound up, enjoying their adolescent-like humping but already somehow sated. She lifted her palm until just her finger was in contact with the silky smooth skin of his pectoral, then ran it playfully around his nipple. A teasing pluck, and he shuddered beneath her.

              “Kagome,” he murmured, eyes still hooded, gaze both sleepy and seductive. He dug his fingers in where he held her and in a movement she could barely see despite being at the center of it, flipped her underneath him on the futon. He bent his head and nuzzled at her neck, nipping softly at the skin just below her ear and where her neck and shoulder met. Now it was her turn to shudder.

              They fumbled with their clothing then, stripping off and shoving aside the necessary layers without moving from their places on the bed. When hands and bodies reconnected though, the urgency of the moment previous dissipated, and they returned to the slow, unhurried petting of before.

              Now, though, his cock, hot and heavy and ever so slightly moistened by a bead of precum, poked restlessly between her parted labia. His thumb had resumed its ministrations at her clitoris, his other hand supporting his weight as he bent over her, laying kisses on her clavicles, laving at her nipples, pressing hotly to her lips. Kagome busied herself with a hand in his hair, tugging it away from his scalp at the base of his head, the other tracing loving designs up and down his spine. 

              His digital teasing was just that – enough to bring her to the edge, but not enough to get her anywhere, so slight the pressure of his thumb as it tweaked her clit, circled down and pressed against her entrance. So frustrating, and so, _so_ good. The head of his cock would bump and push against her every so often, and she would buck her hips up, trying desperately to take him within her, only for his hips to shift away in response.

              “Sesshoumaru,” she groaned, “please, just – I can’t _wait_ anymore.”

              He chuckled into her neck but did not give in. “You bear it so well,” he kissed the words into the swell of one breast. “Be patient a little longer.”

              Kagome sighed as his lips closed around her pebbled nipple, a sweet suction titillating that sensitive flesh. She tugged at his hair almost viciously, looking for any kind of reaction from him. An increase in pressure _anywhere_ and she would cum, she could just feel it. But no matter how hard she yanked, he remained unmoved, persisting in his unhurried stimulation of her frenzied body.

              Her insides were squeezing in on themselves, grasping for him though he wasn’t there. She was brimming and ready to overflow – she just needed – just a little, and she would tip over –

              “Kagome,” he sighed, and her whole body stilled in silent spasm as he filled her all at once, sending her careening over the edge.

              Sesshoumaru groaned, Kagome panted her pleasure out on ragged breaths. She was pulsing around him, holding him inside of her and refusing to allow his retreat. Shocks sparked behind her closed eyelids, her body quaked with its release. He waited, ever patient, for her to come down again before pulling all the way back out.

              She groaned, reached blindly for him as he moved off her and settled down at her side. He kissed her cheek gently and pushed at her shoulder – complying once more with his cue to movement, Kagome turned away from him, so that he spooned her from behind. He hiked one of her legs up and slotted his between for leverage before bullying up into her. The tighter angle had Kagome grunting each time he withdrew and pressed forward again, a little further, until he stilled, fully seated within her.

              His lips caressed the nape of her neck, murmuring words of praise and affection softly into her skin. His hips began a slow rhythm, in time with the motion between them when she’d ridden him, fully clothed, not minutes before.

              Spots dancing before her eyes, Kagome pressed a hand to her sensitized mound, over-stimulated but wanting to chase the orgasm that was building inside of her once again.

              Sesshoumaru continued his sedate fucking, his free hand coming around her torso to grasp at her breast, kneading it in time with his thrusts. Kagome, half out of her mind, dipped her fingers down to feel the taut skin around where he speared into her, the way she stretched for him, then ran them back up to flick impatiently at her still buzzing clit.

              Gradually, she felt herself tightening from the inside out. Sesshoumaru’s smooth thrusts became more labored as he had to press harder, bullying against the strength of her squeezing muscles, to sheathe himself to the hilt.

              Gasping for air, perched once more on the precipice, Kagome wailed his name. “Sesshoumaru—”

              He grunted, and with a last command, beseeching her to let go, they fell into oblivion together.

There was some debate on whether or not she should engage Ikami-san again, but Sesshoumaru was adamant that Kagome should continue practicing without her for a time. Kagome insisted that Ikami-san wasn’t at fault for what had happened to her reiki, that it had been a product of her own fears and reservations, but he was firm in his resolution and she capitulated to his stubbornness eventually.

              She had some work to do before she could attempt to purify the jewel completely. It glowed a pretty pink when it hung around her neck, but it didn’t keep its lustre once she took the necklace off. Once she had sufficient control of her powers, she should be able to purify it down to its core.

              “And then a wish,” she giggled to herself. It was a fanciful idea, but she’d find something good to wish for before completing her mission, she was sure. It wouldn’t hurt, right, even if it didn’t come true? She toyed with a few ideas but nothing seemed grand enough and it didn’t seem likely that she could make a wish for more wishes. She’d think of something.

              In the meantime, though, she made her trips to Higurashi Shrine on her own, sequestering herself in the little room where Ikami-san had sat across from her, and practicing the techniques they had been working on together in addition to spending time working with the bow Sesshoumaru had given her. They were limiting their time together to two weekday evenings and Saturdays, so that she might spend the whole of Sunday at the Shrine, honing her craft. And surprisingly, things seemed to come easier to her when she had the bow in her hands. Sesshoumaru had been right. There was an innate physicality to the use of her spiritual powers that was missing in her previous practice.

              When November reached its midpoint, Sesshoumaru finally broached the topic.

              She spent the previous night at his apartment, as she was doing most Fridays now, and the two had woken in a tangle of limbs under the heavy blankets of Sesshoumaru’s bed, the cold in the air a pleasant contrast to the warmth of their cocoon. As usual, Sesshoumaru awoke before her, and when she finally opened her eyes, it was to the sensation of his fingers running through her hair, soft puffs of his breath warming her forehead, her face tucked into the side of his neck, her arm slung over his chest.

              “Good morning,” she mumbled sleepily against his skin.

              He replied in kind, hand stilling its caresses as he pulled away just enough to be able to look down into her face. Then, without preamble, “How have you been progressing?”

               Kagome’s muzzy smile faded just a bit as her mind struggled out of sleepiness and fought to catch what he was asking. “Much better,” she supplied, when she finally figured it out. “It’s coming easier to me, now. Entered the body memory, you know.”

              He hummed, placing a kiss on the crown of her head. “I would like for us to return to Bokusenou’s forest, when you are ready.”

              “Okay.” She moved out of his grasp and scooted up the bed to lean against the headboard. “I’m assuming you have a date in mind?”

              Sesshoumaru’s smile was confirmation enough. Of course he had a date in mind. He wasn’t going to let her take her sweet time about it. “The Shikon no Tama glows brighter and brighter,” he explained. “It will begin to attract the wrong kind of attention if we do not act soon.”

              Kagome touched it, where it lay on its silver chain, just below her collar bone. “Do you think I should leave it at home?”

              “My home might be safer than yours.” He moved so that his head lay in her lap.

              “What’s this?” She asked, coy, tapping his forehead.

              “A further demonstration of our affections for one another,” was his softly murmured reply. Her fingers began to comb through his bangs, massage his temples and tug on his ears unthinkingly, the way she would with Buyo. The low groan and closing of his eyes in response surprised her, but she managed to suppress her smile.  When his eyes remained closed, Kagome stopped fighting her grin.

              It took a few minutes, filled with this gentle petting, before Kagome’s smile faded and her mind turned back to the business at hand. “I understand in theory what I have to do. Just hold it and let my power flow in, right?” He made a sound of agreement. “I guess I’m just concerned that the only times I’ve ever managed anything of _magnitude_ , I was both in a life-or-death situation, and channeling the power of the Jewel itself.” She frowned. “The force that pushed you back… that wasn’t just _me_ doing that.”

              Now his eyelashes fluttered and his golden eyes peered up at her, speculative. “In only one of those scenarios were you remotely in danger.”

              Kagome scoffed. “That again? _Now_ I know you weren’t going to do anything, but you had me _convinced_ …! And anyway, that’s not even the important point!”

              The corners of his eyes crinkled minutely. “I believe that you underestimate your capabilities.”

              Her brow furrowed; she sighed. “Well maybe leaving it here with you will affect how things progress during my training.” As far as she knew she hadn’t been drawing on its power when she practiced her skills, but having the Jewel safe in Sesshoumaru’s hands would eliminate any possibility of that at all. “How will I even know when I’m ready, anyway?”

              Sesshoumaru rolled onto his side, his face burrowing into the soft flesh of her belly. “I will tell you,” he said, lips moving against her skin.

              This earned an affectionate eye-roll from the Miko, followed by a soft double-tap on the top of his head which indicated her desire to get up. “Enough laying about,” she chirped, voice energized. He rolled away from her and followed dutifully as she climbed out of bed and, slipping on the slippers that Sesshoumaru had bought for her, padded her way into the kitchen, where the matching bathrobe had been discarded in a moment of passion the night before.

              “Perhaps when you return home tomorrow, you might focus on magnitude, as you put it.”

              This was framed as a suggestion, but Kagome knew that it was meant as more of a directive. “Okay,” she agreed, and wasn’t surprised when he whipped out his phone and typed out a quick text. “It’s a little ridiculous that you have a ‘Kagome’s training’ phone tree, you know.”

              He glanced up at her before setting his phone down on the counter and making his way to the stove. “It is for the benefit of _all_ that youkai in the area be alerted when your spiritual practice may affect them.”

              _Ah, yes._ “No repeats of the _arm incident_ ,” she grumbled, feeling that old, sickening shame rise in her throat.

              “Indeed.” He turned his back on her to crack an egg into the pan, and Kagome, spirits much diminished, perched herself on her usual bar stool.

              Things improved when she was shut into her practice room the following morning. The results of her training, now without the Shikon no Tama in the near vicinity, frankly surprised her. The best explanation she could think of for the radical _increase_ in power output that came from leaving the Jewel behind, was that it was passively draining her energy in order to purify itself. When it was no longer in contact with her skin, after all, it lost its radiance and became the glassy pink bauble she had worn throughout her childhood once more.

              She texted Sesshoumaru her hypothesis, and the message was marked as _read_ but he hadn’t replied. “I guess it doesn’t matter,” she mumbled in disappointment, “since I’m still not _ready_.” But as she sat in the small room, pushing reiki from the deep well within her to her fingertips, she forgot that little quibble. Previously, she had imagined the movement of reiki like water in pipes and pouring out a tap; now, it felt like rushing rivers and turbulent tributaries, rushing into the surrounding atmosphere like a waterfall.

              Keeping in mind Sesshoumaru’s instruction to focus on magnitude, Kagome did her best to drain the well, widening the river, pulling from deep within her and projecting outward. The room brightened, the light tinged pink, and her hands glowed so intensely that she couldn’t look at them without squinting, and could not even tolerate _that_ for long. With so much power discharged into the air around her, Kagome weighed the benefits of discharging it all (she would feel incredibly drained, there was a risk to any youkai nearby that hadn’t received the notice Sesshoumaru set) versus pulling it back within her (also a little fatiguing, she would not get to feel the extent of her remaining reiki).

              It felt callous, but she ended up deciding on the former, and cast her eyes about the room for something to direct her energy toward. Her eyes alighted on a small cup of water, and she reached for it unthinkingly.

              There was rush in her ears, and then a boom. The glass shattered, fragments flying in every direction; the water evaporated, fizzling into the air with a snap. A shard of glass shot past her cheek and nicked the skin, another on the opposite side of her neck. Kagome stumbled backward, falling back onto her forearms, warm blood dripping from the fresh wounds, glass dust sparkling on her shoulders and hair in the low light of the dim room.

              It took a moment for the room to settle to perfect stillness once more. Only then did Kagome resume breathing. Her inhalation was a shuddering thing, still reeling from the adrenaline.

              When her breathing calmed, she shoved herself up to a sitting position again. Tentative fingers explored the cuts on her face and neck, coming back sticky and warm, glazed in red. Slowly she stood, shaking herself off, the crushed glass raining down from her hair and shoulders like dust motes dispersing in the breeze.

              Kagome looked at the localized destruction, then her bloodied fingers. When her vision stopped jittering, she turned her gaze inward. She wasn’t as tired as she expected she would be. A peep at the well within her, and Kagome nearly toppled over.

              _What the…?_

              It was still full.

 

 

              The drive up the mountain was quiet; trees zooming past the windows, their barren branches covered in snow. Kagome glanced at Sesshoumaru, where he sat in the driver’s seat, hands on the wheel, calm and collected. “Do you think maybe it’s a little sentient?”

              Sesshoumaru turned his head, looking at her for a moment before returning his eyes to the road. “The stone itself is not, I think,” came his reply. “But the souls inside of it are likely to be.”

              After a lovely evening at the same ryokan as before, they were headed back up to Bokusenou’s forest. Kagome had trained a further two weeks before Sesshoumaru had deemed her ready, contrary to her expectations of needing a great deal more time to hone her skills. Without the Shikon no Tama zapping her strength from her, she made leaps and bounds each time she sat down for practice.

              “If I’ve been boosting Midoriko’s powers so far, though, shouldn’t she have been able to win her battle by now? I thought they were perfectly matched in strength. A little tip over on her side… shouldn’t that be enough?”

              His hand crossed the distance between them and settled in its familiar place above her knee. “There are more youkai around you than you imagine,” was his considered reply, but she didn’t miss the way the corners of his lips twitched upward. She still had a hard time perceiving nearby youkai, unless they were very familiar to her. “And with the amount of time you spend in my presence, I find it rather miraculous that the tide of their battle has not swung entirely the other way.”

              Kagome swatted his hand, pouting, though her eyes gleamed with good humor. “Okay, so the plan is—”

              His chuckle startled her into silence. “How many times have we revisited the plan in these last twenty-four hours?”

              Now she laughed, and turned toward the window once more. Her antennae popped up when she recognized the bend in the road. It wouldn’t be long now.

              They parked in the same place as before; Sesshoumaru retrieved their changes of clothes from an overnight bag in the trunk as Kagome stretched beside the car, boots crunching underneath her in the thin layer of icy snow.

              Sesshoumaru beckoned her to him, and she slid gracefully to his side. For a moment, they were still, gazing at one another. A small step forward brought Kagome into his chest. She rose up onto her toes just as he wrapped his arm about her waist, pulling her in close. Their lips met in a sweet, lingering kiss. Her lashes fluttered up slowly, cheeks warm with the slow thrum of a newly revived arousal. When his hand cupped her cheek, thumb stroking over her cheekbone, she closed her eyes again. One more kiss, this time a gentle peck on her forehead.

              “Undress,” he murmured, voice muffled by the sweep of her bangs.

              As usual, she obeyed his command. She shivered, bare in the cold, skin pebbling with gooseflesh, her breath puffing into little clouds of steam before her lips.

              He reached for her, already finished changing, glorious in his red and white garbs, white pelt draped over his shoulder, swords strapped them to his waist.

              His long, tapered fingers skimmed her bare shoulders. He followed their motion with a trail of soft kisses up to her neck. He nuzzled her, nose touched to the thin white scar left behind after the broken glass had injured her, breathing in deeply before sweeping her hair aside with his hand. As cold as she had been before, now she melted under his gentle ministrations.

              The kimono he dressed her in this time had a simple pattern – light snowfall over a black background with a waterside scene at the hem – but there were more layers than there had been in summer, and the outfit was topped with a thickly lined jacket. Lastly he pressed a white fur muff into her trembling fingers before wrapping a matching stole around her neck. Both furs were flecked in black, smooth and luscious in her hands.

              Her nose was tipped red with cold, but he had her bundled up so warmly that the iciness on her face felt quite nice by contrast.

              “Shall I fix your hair?” he asked, still holding the stole together, leaning in to nose at her cheek.

              Kagome’s face, pinkened from the cold, flushed a deeper shade of rose as she nodded slightly.

              He moved behind her, pulling her long black locks out from under the fur, and combing through them with his fingertips indulgently before setting to work. He combed them up and back into a relaxed twist, pinned them in place with a tinkling hair stick. His hand trailed down her neck, over her shoulder and down her arm to where her hand disappeared into the muff. Kagome freed herself from its silky white fur and he took her hand in his.

              Sesshoumaru’s grip was reassuring, his skin radiated heat. Kagome sweated with both nerves and excitement. Her hand grew clammy in Sesshoumaru’s grip, though he didn’t release her, instead tucking her into his chest and holding her tight as a cloud formed beneath them and lifted them up into the air. They didn’t land in the clearing where Bokusenou lived, instead touching down in a gap in the wood. Sesshoumaru led her with practiced ease through the forest, not caring that the paths were snowed over; he had traversed these woods in search of Bokusenou countless times over these past millennia.

              Despite the snow and the winter chill, the forest around them buzzed with an unusual energy. The closer they got to Bokusenou’s tree, the more frenetic it became – skittering through the underbrush and tittering overhead, unseen despite the naked branches. It was a bubbling excitement, as though the creatures all around were eager to catch a glimpse of them, trailing after them to keep them in their sights.

              Kagome soaked it up, straightening her posture, firming her resolve.

              Ahead of them, she saw a break in the trees. Sesshoumaru’s grip on her hand tightened, and he pulled her back when she would have walked ahead. For a moment, the world stopped turning. He cupped her face, leaned in, and nuzzled at her temple. His steamy breath warmed her icy cheeks. “Are you ready to do what must be done?”

              She turned her face into his and placed a soft kiss on his cheek. “Oh, yes.”

              Her free hand snuck back into the warmth of the muff; his came up to settle on her lower back. “Then let us proceed.”

              He gave her the time to suck in a deep breath before they pressed forward once more. The clearing, bright with the sunlight reflecting off the snowy carpet, illuminated Bokusenou’s wizened face as he peered at them.

               There was a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, the corners crinkling up in a smile that twisted his lips upwards at the corners. “Ah,” he intoned, “once more, the cherries in full bloom bring those who never visit, calling at my door.”

              Kagome chuckled, recalling the haiku he had quoted the last time they had come to see him. “Hello, Bokusenou-sama. It’s been a while,” she greeted, bowing lowly and correctly.

              Sesshoumaru grunted his greeting.

              “Do you come to me with a solution, committed to absolutely?”

              “We do,” she replied, glancing quickly at the stoic demon lord beside her.

              “Hmmm,” Bokusenou acknowledged. “And what is your solution?”

              “Reciprocal action,” Kagome stated, overcome by a faint sense of déjà vu. “I will purify it first, and then we—” again she glanced at Sesshoumaru, surprised to find an approving gaze directed her way, “will neutralize it. Two forces within, two forces without.”

              The wood of his trunk creaked as Bokusenou turned his face toward Sesshoumaru. “Will she be able to match you, Sesshoumaru?”

              “I have the utmost faith in her abilities.”

“And what role am I to play?” the Magnolia tree asked, still speaking to the youkai before him.

              Kagome straightened, her gaze sharpened. She hadn’t really thought about it; that there might be a _reason_ he wanted to do this in Bokusenou’s presence… that was a possibility that had escaped her. But now she thought about it, he _must_ have a purpose in coming here. Sesshoumaru _never_ did things without reason.

              “If we should fail,” Sesshoumaru murmured, eyes glinting devilishly, “I hope for you to suffer the same fate.”

              Bokusenou’s laugh was explosive; it faded into chuckles that lasted for several minutes, his eyes squinted closed with the force of his mirth. “You were always and impudent pup,” he remarked, once he had returned to his usual self-possession.

              Sesshoumaru’s smirk was hidden behind the fall of his hair as he withdrew a small wooden box from the sleeve of his kimono, lowering himself gracefully to place it on the flat surface of an upturned stone on the ground by Bokusenou’s roots. He opened it carefully, removing the lid and tucking it back into his sleeve. There, glittering in the afternoon sun, refracting the light through its pink center and casting rosy rainbows over the snow-covered ground, was the Shikon no Tama.

              Her lover stepped over to her and placed an encouraging hand on her shoulder, rubbing his thumb over the joint before stepping back and away. Youki trailed behind him, but only after it had washed up against her in a smoothing wave, whispering _calm_.

              Kagome smiled appreciatively, though still nervously, before moving closer and closer to the stone pedestal. She knelt before it in a stiff _seiza_ [1]. _You’ve done this time and time again, Kagome_ , began her internal pep talk. _Just fall back on your training._

              Which is precisely what she did.

              Her eyelids fluttered closed, dark lashes splaying like soft shadows over her cheekbones. She breathed in deep and turned her eye inward, searching for the source of her power. Deep within her, and stretching even deeper still, the amorphous mass of pink spiritual energy jittered with excitement, ready for use.

              Slowly, she visualized its flow from her center, pulsing toward her extremities. It began as a trickle, then increased to a stream, and with a continuous and concerted _push_ , the river ran raucous and wild to her fingertips. It poured forth from her digits, congealing in a brilliant pink sphere between her two cupped hands, where they lay ready on her lap.

              This cool, comforting glow, she realized with a sudden jolt that ratcheted up her spine, was the healing yin side of reiki. It was the strength that repaired her broken skin when the glass had scored it, the power that would purify the taint of the Shikon no Tama. The reiki that flared from her splayed fingers when she had pushed Sesshoumaru away, then was the yang; aggressive, boiling hot, like the surface of the sun.

              The cup of her hands moved to cradle its burden more firmly as the energy became denser in hands, compacting in on itself to fit into its container. The waterfall of reiki grew stronger and faster, pouring into the pink between her hands, as the minutes passed. Her ears were full of the rushing sound of her energy as it drained out and pooled before her, her head growing lighter and lighter as time ticked by.

              “Kagome,” murmured Sesshoumaru behind her, snapping her focus, bringing her back to herself. She felt as though her soul had floated above her, and now was sinking down into her flesh once more. Kagome stood, legs lengthening below her laconically as she fought the pins-and-needles that returned with the resumed blood flow to her toes. One tentative step, then another, toward her target. “You are moving smoothly and slowly, carrying your concentration like a brimming cup,” Sesshoumaru observed, drawing her out of herself once more.

              She glanced over at him with a rueful grin before returning her attention to her hands, near overflowing with her power. “I’m contemplating eventualities,” she replied, before lowering herself to knees before the pedestal. _Make a wish now, or later?_ Making it now seemed foolish. The stone was still inert, not yet purified; it would only – hypothetically – have the ability to grant a wish once cleared of the malice tainting it.

              Slowly, she moved her hands over the jewel, and once it was centered below her palms where they touched, she opened the bowl from the bottom. The vital pink of her reiki descended in an orb of iridescent light.

              When it touched the Jewel—

              White light, brilliant and blinding, washed the clearing, Bokusenou, and Sesshoumaru out of her vision. A frigid breeze billowed around her, a dust devil made of snowflakes and rising from the ground around her, swirling and spiraling up toward the heavens.

              Sight returned slowly. She gave thanks that her hair was tied tightly back, and that little of it had escaped in the force of the upward storm. Bokusenou came back into view, expression thoughtful, and eyes focused on the stone pedestal.

              Kagome looked down at the wooden box, and the bauble lying in pride of place within it.

              “ _Oh_ …” she sighed, taking in the softly glowing orb, a brilliant pink, as though lit from within. “Do you think it’ll do?” She asked, before glancing to her periphery, where Sesshoumaru stood, rigid and still. He was _squinting_ , she realized, and there was something of a grimace written into the tense lines of his face. “Sesshoumaru? What’s wrong?”

              He squeezed his eyes closed and shook his head minutely. “Its voice is rather loud,” he eyed Bokusenou, who was still peering silently at the stone. The tree only nodded.

              Kagome recalled the wistful look on Yura’s face, the longing in Kouga’s, when they described the Shikon no Tama in its glory, so long ago. “To us, you know, it  _sang_ ,” he’d said. “It was irresistible. It called out to you and got under your skin and promised you endless power and wishes granted.” But Sesshoumaru’s voice had dripped with derision, when he spoke of his brother’s desire to use the Jewel, in his quest for greater power. She studied his expression; he really _did_ seem repulsed by it, rather than entranced. There was nothing in his demeanor or in the movement of his youki that indicated any desire to reach forth and take the Shikon no Tama for his own use.

              He could have nothing but contempt for strength acquired in such a way.

              Her heart nearly burst with pride.

              Sesshoumaru angled his body toward hers, tilting his head as he examined her. “Are you ready?”

              She nodded.

              In concert, they stepped to the stone with the wooden box atop it, and moved until its precious cargo sat directly between them.

              Her hands were quaking at her sides. Her skin became clammy. They hadn’t exactly practiced _this_ part, though they’d planned it all out in excruciating detail. Just as with Naraku, and with Sesshoumaru when he’d attacked her in the forest, he would strike first, to evoke a fight-or-flight response in her. She would strike back, ostensibly, with hypothetically equal strength, and, supposedly, that would create the oppositional and interdependent forces to stand in opposition and interdependence to the two within the stone. Two within, two without.

              All fine and good but with the moment finally at hand… Kagome shuddered. A bead of sweat formed on her brow, and one on her upper lip. She groaned, wiping her palms off on the front of her kimono, then shook her head to try and clear her thoughts.

              “Kagome,” Sesshoumaru called to her, eyes meeting with hers over the pulsing pink Jewel. She gave a weak smile in reply. “You will succeed,” he said, gaze intent on her face, lips firm with his conviction.

              Kagome nodded, acknowledging his words, though she still quaked with nerves. She breathed in deep. Then, blinking away the stupor that had fallen over her, she readied her hands before her. “Oh, wait,” she started, a moment of realization falling upon her. It took one more quavering breath in to settle herself. She had almost forgotten. This was her chance to make a wish.

              She squeezed her eyes closed, trying to focus on the many things she could ask for, if given the chance. She hadn't actually settled on a wish, hoping that when the moment arrived she would _just_ _know_. But somehow, her mind was entirely blank. She couldn’t remember any of the little wishes she had tossed around in the preceding weeks. She tried to calm herself, slow her heartbeat from its rabbiting pace in her chest, lock down her train of thought – an action she was intimately familiar with. Chasing away idle thoughts was a part of the strict meditation practice she had begun months and months before, when she first started her reiki training.

              But in the moment, the most she could accomplish was the calming of her breathing, the smoothing of her pulse. She was entirely unable to organize her mind and put words to the desire to make a wish.

              Sesshoumaru, across from her, grunted, apparently displeased with her delaying the task at hand. The sound jolted her out of her impromptu concentration, and returned her to the waking world.

              "I'm ready," she managed, tucking her thumbs into her palms and curling her fingers around them, forming two tight fists. "I'm ready."

              What had they said, anyway? – that it was supremely unlikely that if she should make a wish, that it would come true. Because the souls within the jewel had their own agendas, and seeing to the desires of others was not likely to be one of them.

              She raised her gaze from the pink jewel up to meet Sesshoumaru's incisive gaze, and lowered her center of gravity into a ready stance. One more deep breath, and then with a quavering voice, "I’m ready."

              "Do you fear you will not survive this?" He asked, voice cool and expression remote.

              She shook her head. "Not this time. I know you wouldn’t do anything to harm me."

              "There is significantly greater risk this time around, Kagome," he murmured, voice gentling. "In addition to the consideration that the Tenseiga can only bring a soul back from death but the once."

              "Do you think that it's a likely outcome that I might die?"

              Of course, there was no need to concern herself over the idea that Sesshoumaru might be adversely affected in any way – never mind injured to the point of death. As far as she had come, she was nowhere near his level.

              "I think it is important to address all possible outcomes and to walk into this with eyes open, informed of what may occur."

              "So you wait until the very last second to bring this to my attention?" She asked, one eyebrow rising, in sharp contrast to the flatness of her voice.

              "Perhaps my timing might use some work," he acceded, though he seemed the furthest possible thing from remorseful.

              Kagome regarded him, then Bokusenou, who had remained conspicuously silent since the pink pearl before them had been restored to its previous resplendent glory. Bokusenou did not look at her, still focusing on the bauble. She wasn't even sure that he had heard. "It’s too late to take a step back now," she murmured, a little angry. "I’m not deluded enough to think that it wasn't a real risk, you know. I know my limitations. But the Jewel is restored, right? It sings. And since it sings, that means that it will soon be a target for any youkai near enough to heat it. " She sucked in a breath. "If we don’t do this now, we'd just be letting history repeat itself.” She thought back to the stories he, Kouga, Yura, and Ikami-san had told her; the loss, the devastation, the suffering that the jewel had so often been the center of. “The Shikon no Tama needs to go."

              Sesshoumaru nodded in acknowledgment of her little speech. There was a gleam of pride in his golden eyes, and his lips had relaxed from their tense posture before. A little tendril of youki reached around the pedestal and wound around her leg, pulsing twice before radiating calm, and she couldn't help but laugh.

              "I’m a little upset you thought so little of me as to think I would say any different."

              "I never thought you would," he corrected her. "I am merely ascertaining that you are ready. That you will do what needs to be done."

              "How many times do you have to ask and have me answer 'yes' before it's enough?" Her voice reverberated, a little pitchy and peevish, throughout the small clearing.

              "As many times as I need to in order to achieve the desired result.”

              “Which would be what, exactly?”

              “You are far too easy to rile, Kagome,” he murmured instead of answering her. “You ought to work on reigning in your temper.”

              “ _Excuse_ me?” She nearly shrieked, quite suddenly out of patience.

              She caught the pleased glimmer in his eye, the smug self-satisfaction in the near-imperceptible tilt of his head. _Oh, duh_ , she thought, but that was as far as she got before Sesshoumaru’s youki pressed forward in a crushing wave.

              She threw up her hands, a burst of neon pink power propelling itself from her crossed forearms, meeting the oncoming yokui just before it rushed over her. She could feel the building pressure from the wall of green, its slow and steady push against her defenses. For a moment, she was transported to a darkened cave, with crunching, broken bone underfoot, and a similar oppressive press of youki, squashing her beneath its weight, squeezing the air from her lungs, overwhelming her completely so that she gasped for breath and dripped with sweat once it had been lifted. The spine-chilling fear she had felt in those moments came back to her, and in a desperate attempt to protect herself, Kagome tensed and braced herself against the youki tunneling in on her, reaching deep within herself to the well of simmering reiki within her, so readily at hand even after having purified the jewel.

              She could do this. She could fight this; fight him. She had to, or she would die.

              In that moment, with a flash of sudden insight, she realized that there was nothing she could desire more than to live. To live, and live on, and be with him until his time on this earth came to a close. She loved him, and she knew he felt just as strongly as she did: she wanted to be with him, forever.

              And there was no way for her to accomplish this unless she managed to live through this confrontation. The last time he had targeted her, he had withdrawn at the last moment, only seeking to get a reaction out of her. Of pushing her into pushing back. That was not the case now.

              But now there was no choice but to fight, because he wouldn't hold back. He would press forward, harder and harder and harder, and there was nothing she could do but respond in kind.

              Kagome grunted. Her brow furrowed and she gritted her teeth. Her heels dug through the snow and into the packed and frozen dirt below it, grasping for purchase.

              _More. More!_

              The steady stream of reiki turned into a river, and she chanted a mantra of _magnitude, magnitude_ over and over in her mind until she neared the volume and velocity that she had worked with earlier. Suddenly, the pressure on her eased off a little. Sesshoumaru was no longer in complete control of the situation. The wall of youki, pushed back by the steadily growing tide of her reiki, receded. _More!_ she screamed into the vast darkness of her mind, seeing nothing but the sparking blue where the forces of their spiritual energy met.

              Kagome’s fear waned as a sort of equilibrium was reached between them. The push and pull continued, as they fine-tuned the output of their power, each moving to match the other in a finely choreographed dance.

              She had the same rushing in her ears, the same whiteness behind her closed eyelids every time she blinked, the same light-headedness, almost as though she could not fit into her own body. For a moment it felt almost as though she were floating.

              A drop of sweat rolled down from her brow to the tip of her nose, dripping off and splattering against her wrist. All about them, the snow had melted, turning the ground beneath them to mud.  She pressed harder, trying to anchor herself through the weight in her heels; the slickness of the mud beneath them not sufficient resistance for her to maintain her position.

               Her body slid away from her quarry, shoved back by the combined forces of their power, but nevertheless, she persisted. The stronger she pushed, the stronger he did. The energy before them grew brighter and denser. It built up, compacting and folding in on itself before them, the way waves crash off rocks and dykes, moving back to the rushing ocean before washing up against them once more.

              _So hot._

Her clothing was drenched now. So much for winter – the grove had become a kiln, a blazing inferno. She couldn’t hear past the rush of air steam as the snow around them boiled out of the dirt.

              And then, like a crack of thunder, Sesshoumaru’s voice broke through, calling her name.

              _Now! Now!_

              Kagome bent her knees deeper, lowering until she was on her knees, mud squelching around her legs, and the trajectory of her energy became level with the Shikon no Tama.

              White, brilliant light blinded her.

              She stumbled back.

              This time, though, she did not lose consciousness. Vision returned slowly. Sesshoumaru, who relied on his other senses to navigate the world, gripped her by the elbow and hauled her upright. She blinked repeatedly, as though looking through a fog, and fixed on a softly glowing light ahead of her. A few uneasy steps with Sesshoumaru acting as support, and Kagome stood before the pedestal, the Shikon no Tama within, reflecting the cloud-cover and glowing an odd shade of silver.

              Everything hurt.

              Despite her aching muscles, Kagome leaned down and plucked the stone from its container. “Did it—” she began, but her voice fizzled out as she felt the bauble warm in her hand.

              It rolled two and fro on her palm as she brought it closer to her face, but quite suddenly its rolling slowed, the surface of the stone now tacky, sticking to her skin.

              “What…?”

              The silver glowing bead was melting like chocolate on a hot day, forming a quicksilver pool in her now cupped hands.

              Kagome darted a glance at Sesshoumaru but he looked equally as perplexed.

              The warmth of the stone now transferred to her skin, prickling with the heat. It burned, but she kept perfectly still despite the searing pain, gritting her teeth and holding her breath in her throat. _Don’t drop it,_ she commanded herself, aching to just that.

              “Kagome…?”

              She wanted to close her eyes, to stave off the pain, but she forced herself through her panting to keep them open, to bear witness to whatever—

              Sesshoumaru’s hand grabbed her wrist.

              Thrown off balance, her hands clapped together as she toppled into his arms.

              “No!” She cried, pulling her palms apart, praying desperately that she hadn’t spilled a single drop.

              But when they parted, there was no more Shikon no Tama, puddled up or otherwise. Instead, where the quicksilver pool had been, her palms were stained a reflective silver. It absorbed into her skin in the space of a blink, the blistering heat disappearing along with the stains.

              Sesshoumaru blinked.

              Grip still firm on her wrist, he lowered his nose and breathed in deep.

              “It’s gone…?” she whispered.

              He sniffed again, wrinkled his nose and tried once more.

              “It’s gone,” she stated, voice brittle in disbelief.

              “Yes,” he replied, unwinding his fingers from her arm. “It’s gone.”

             

             

-+-

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only two parts to go! Will release the next two parts over the next week!
> 
> There’s a verbatim Hannibal quote in there someplace. God that show is so poetic! Just a hint— its something Sesshoumaru says about how Kagome goes. Can you find it?
> 
> As to the poll in the last Act, the aye’s have it, unanimously! Sesshoumaru’s POV will be next in the works. No guarantees on publication date but I’m shooting for the week of 8/1 or thereabouts.
> 
>  
> 
> Footnotes:
> 
> [1] Seiza: The proper way to sit in Japan; kneeling, legs folded underneath, bottom resting on your heels. It’s so painful to hold for long periods of time!


	11. Act III, Part III: Marriage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here it is… the end of the sequelogue that took much longer to finish than it had any right to!

-+-

 

**Han-Kichi : An Omikuji Epilogue**

Act Three

In Three Parts

 

-+-

III

縁談 Marriage Proposal: It will not come.

 

              The end of the quest felt a lot like grieving a loss. She had been working so hard for so long toward one particular end, and suddenly it was gone. She felt oddly abandoned, bereft. She couldn’t remember losing her father, really – she was too young to understand what was happening at the time – so she likened it to the loss of Chiaki-sensei the year before. To Miroku, who understood grief only abstractly, she compared it to the feeling of finishing a great book series, wishing and hoping there was more, only to know for certain that there never would be. He’d kind of gotten the idea then.

              She would find herself heading toward the front door of her apartment, reaching for her house keys, eager to make her way to Higurashi Shrine, to commandeer her little practice room and sit and meditate, or make her way into the yard to shoot at the target still hanging there. Then, she’d remember there was no real purpose in training so single-mindedly anymore, and would flop down into an exasperated pile of human on her bed-cum-couch. She found there were so many hours in the evening that she didn’t quite know how to fill, except to try and turn her focus onto her dissertation.

              Her studies benefitted.

              Her state of mind didn’t, really.

              Sesshoumaru seemed to understand. He offered her his companionship when he could – he seemed to be embroiled in some business affairs that took a lot of his time, though, so they were still meeting mostly just on Fridays and the weekends. “Continue your training,” he suggested one evening, when her despondency remained even in his presence. “Mastery of your strength and skill will only serve you.”

              It felt different, though, without a goal in mind. She couldn’t quite take the step forward and follow his advice.

              She even made it as far as the Shrine once, though she never progressed past the house. Souta waylaid her, bursting out the front door with news about this and that, and she trailed after him into the kitchen, where her Mama stood washing vegetables at the sink. “We haven’t seen you in a while, Kagome-chan,” Mama remarked, a placid smile on her face.

              “Yeah, sis, where you been?” Souta asked, grabbing an apple from a bowl of fruit on the counter and taking a bite.

              “Oh, you know. School stuff has had me busy. And Sesshoumaru and I took a quick trip to visit his… er… family friend.”

              Souta’s lips twisted. Mama remained serene. “And how is that nice young man? We haven’t seen him since you were in the hospital.”

              “I’ll bring him by again soon,” Kagome replied, picking up an apple too. “At latest we’ll stop by for New Year’s.”

              “Did you guys fix the… uh…?” Souta waved vaguely in the air, eyes wide and insistent, the exact opposite of sneaky.

              “Yeah,” Kagome said, patting him affectionately on the head. “We sorted that shit out.”

 

 

              When she got back to her apartment that night, Sesshoumaru was sitting on her bed. Kagome hung her purse up on its designated hook, toed off her shoes and set them facing the door on the tile of her little genkan, and then settled herself down on the mattress beside him. Now that he was here, it felt like a chasm within her had filled—she felt whole again. “I’m home,” she sighed, contentment softening her face, and leaned against his shoulder.

              “Welcome home,” he greeted, wrapping his arm around her back and settling his hand on her hip. He tugged her closer, and nuzzled into the crown of her head; a greeting she’d come to both expect and adore.

              “This is a pleasant surprise.” She pecked his cheek. “Did you wrap up your business stuff?”

              “Not entirely.” He pulled away and kissed her lightly. “I’ll have to be away for a week or so to conclude matters to my satisfaction.” He puffed out a breath so light she could barely hear it, but it was certainly a sigh.

              She wanted to ask what it was that he was doing, but it was _youkai_ business, and that was something that she didn’t want to intrude on if she wasn’t expressly invited. She murmured a polite nothing hoping that he would resolve things quickly, and he chuckled into her ear. “I will be back in time for the New Year’s visit to Higurashi Shrine. You have no need to be concerned about that.”

              His fingers reached up under the hem of her shirt and tickled at her skin. Kagome slapped his hand away playfully before standing. “Tea?” She called over her shoulder as she rummaged through the overhead cabinet in the kitchen. He hummed his assent and leaned back, propped up on one of her pillows. “So, when do you leave?” She asked, filling the electric kettle and setting the water to boil.

              “Tomorrow morning.”

              “Ah,” she nodded sagely. “Then you’re filling your reserves.”

              “Reserves?”

              “Your Kagome Reserves. Filling them up before you abandon me for the next few weeks.”

              He chuckled again, closing his eyes, tilting his head back against the wall. “Given that is true…” he patted the mattress beside him. She needed no further incentive to forget the water boiling in the kettle and assume her rightful place at his side.

 

             

              Tucked between Sango and Miroku on their couch – the one that had formerly sat in Kagome and Sango’s living room when they’d been roommates – she found herself very much at their mercy. A movie was playing, but they were chattering so loudly over it that Kagome wasn’t even sure she could say what genre it was, let alone name any of the characters or describe the plot. Not that it mattered in the least to the fun they were having.

              Miroku handed her a bowl of fried squid. She took a handful of the _okazu_ [1], then a swig of her beer. Sango bumped her arm just as Kagome tilted her drink; it tippled over and splashed across the top of her black sweater. Raucous laughter accompanied Miroku’s jetting from the couch to find some towels to absorb the spill.

              “Ugh, this was such a good idea,” Sango sighed, her satisfaction evident in the wide smile on her relaxed countenance.

              Kagome, grimacing at the smell of the beer embedded into the natural fibers of her sweater, shot Miroku some side-eye before agreeing. “We’ve all been a little too busy, I guess,” she offered by way of explanation.

              “ _Some_ busier than others,” Sango’s voice was sly as she jabbed her elbow into Kagome’s side. Someone screamed on-screen. “What’s this I hear about a _research trip_ with a certain smokin’ hot guest lecturer?”

              “If you two are getting into girl talk, I will politely excuse myself,” Miroku groused good-naturedly, though his eyes sparkled with an interest that he wouldn’t voice, and he made no move to leave.

              “Is it weird for a couple to go on a trip together?” Kagome evaded, ignoring Miroku entirely, and took a – finally successful – drink from her beer.

              “It’s only weird if he’s a professor and pulls you from classes for you to go _do it_.” At this, both Sango and Miroku’s eyebrows waggled up and down in the same exact way, and all three of them burst into surprised and delighted laughter.

              “You two have been together too long!” Again she tried side-stepping the question, and reached for another handful of squid.

              Her friends were heading in a decidedly nuptial direction, and with a haste that was really rather remarkable. The on-again off-again nature of their relationship was now solidly always on. They were living together, something even their conservative parents had sanctioned. Sango had been decorating their little apartment like she actually cared about how it looked, and they’d entered into a routine that was so sweetly domestic it felt as though it belonged to a long-married couple rather than a pair of busy-bodies that should _really just learn when to can it_. Granted they were still in grad school, and it would be a while before they would finish, earn their licenses, and become _shakai-jin_ [2] for real, but the ‘on the cusp of marriage’ vibe was rolling off them so hard that in the blink of an eye they’d be ‘long-married perverts’ instead, and Kagome really felt like if she wasn’t careful they’d be asking her to swing with them shortly.

              Although, honestly, with Miroku involved… Sango might say no at first, but Miroku would wear her down enough eventually to at least ask.

              “I’m never having a threesome with you, by the way. Or swinging,” Kagome added, completely apropos of nothing, which prompted another bout of uncontrolled and slightly manic laughter from Sango, and unrestrained mirth with a hint of ‘challenge accepted’ from Miroku.

              Better that she had kept her mouth shut.

              “I see that look,” Kagome forged on, giving him the evil eye, trying desperately to dispel any ideas that might be brewing in his mind. “Trust me, you do not want Sesshoumaru for competition or comparison.”

              That shut him right up and took the imminent promise of mischief-making right out of his stupid sparkling eyes.

              When things had calmed down and they managed to watch precisely four seconds of the mystery movie without interruption, Sango broke the silence between them once more. “You’re doing okay though, now, right, Kagome-chan?” Her question was accompanied with a gentle touch to the shoulder, something so sweet and sisterly that any thought of posturing or bristling Kagome may have had melted away in an instant.

              “I mean, I won’t lie that things weren’t rough at the start of the year, what with... you know... how sick I got and all that. And Sesshoumaru wasn’t always the _easiest_ boyfriend.” She took a deep breath and considered. The year had its ups and downs, certainly, but it hadn’t been _all_ bad. “I mean, I’m okay now.”

              Sango gave her _a look_.

              “No, I mean it. I’m actually the best I’ve been in a long time, somehow.”

              It struck her then just how true it was.

              She turned the thought over in her head.

              Actually, wait, hadn’t she pulled an omikuji fortune that said something about that...? She couldn’t quite remember. It had been almost twelve months, after all – it would be in just two weeks. She’d have to look for it when she got home.

              But when she remembered to check the pin-board above her desk, she didn’t find the omikuji that she had drawn at the beginning of the year. Oh, wait— that was the one before. “That’s right,” she mumbled aloud. Last year, she had found it in the lining of her coat. Was that before her death, or after...?

              What had she done with the one she’d drawn this year? She made a cursory search through her desk drawers, then in her purse and her backpack, and then as a last-ditch resort dug her hands into the pockets of her winter coat and probed for holes in the lining. But the hole where she had mended it before was still patent, and no new ones had appeared either.

              Had she tied it up to wish it away?

              There was a memory there on the edges of her mind, nagging at her, but she couldn’t quite bring it to the fore.

              With a shrug, she set the matter aside. Granted, it would have been nice to reread it, to see if her fortunes had panned out as written on that little slip of paper, see if the poem made any sense in light of the events of the months prior, but what was lost was lost. No use bothering about it. Life was too short anyway.

              That thought too struck a chord, somehow.

 

 

              The days passed with a frenzy of activity. As they neared Christmas and the end of school before the winter break, Kagome’s diligence with her schoolwork finally began to pay off— she was a step ahead with her assignments, and her workload was considerably reduced from what it might have been, though she remained frightfully busy.

              Sesshoumaru texted more frequently than expected, given that he was away for whatever kind of work he was off doing. Each time he did was a boon, as though she’d found something she’d been looking for for a long time.

 _Aren’t you supposed to be lecturing a course?_ she asked him via text, once. For the amount of time he spent away, it seemed like his students were getting the short end of the stick.

              His answer was that he skyped in to his lectures.

              This surprised her, not least because she hadn’t been aware that he even knew what Skype was.

              But while she pounded away at her keyboard, writing papers, adding and editing her dissertation on whatever number iteration of her first draft she was on, he was also apparently keeping busy. Her thoughts strayed to him more often than she would like to admit, but then, she was a girl in love. Little things like that could be forgiven as long as she kept her pining to a minimum. Although it was significantly past what could be called a ‘minimum’.

              _Will you be back for Christmas or should I find a stand-in to celebrate with?_ she asked, sometime after eleven in the evening one night, a few days out from the mentioned day.

              _Can you replace me so easily, do you think?_ he replied.

              She didn’t answer for a while, toying with the idea of teasing him a little further, of saying something truly provocative, like reminding him that before they began dating last year, she’d been involved with _two_ other men of his acquaintance. But she doubted he considered Hojo-kun a ‘man’ in reality, and somehow she felt that using Kouga-kun as bait would turn out poorly for her rather than fun and frisky as she initially envisioned. He was still sore about her ‘smelling like wolf’ if she ever spent time with him, even though he was always just one of a group. 

              _You egoist, you just want to see me deny that_ , she said instead. It was as good as a denial, anyway.

              She put her phone down on her desk and stared off into the middle distance, tucking a stray strand of dark hair behind her ear. She was lonely without him near. More than lonely. Weirdly, a little unbalanced.

              If she was honest... Ever since their day in Bokusenou’s forest, things between them had felt so calm and placid, so natural and unstressed. When he was away from her... it felt rather like missing a part of herself. It was different than missing Mama or Souta or Ichiro. She would think of them, wonder how they were doing, but once distracted she would move on with her day.

              As much as she ostensibly wasn’t pining for him, the fact remained that it felt like a thread on the fabric of her reality was being pulled, and she felt it tugging, and that tugging vied for her attention no matter what she was doing.

              She mulled over it for a long time.

              What had changed?

              Something had been off that day. Bokusenou’s odd look when he had finally been able to tear his eyes from the Jewel and look at the two in the clearing before him. The way his gaze had changed after the stone had disappeared. The strange mutterings before Sesshoumaru had whisked them away back to the hotel to rest; Kagome nearly asleep on her feet. There had been something off, then.

              What was it that Bokusenou had been muttering about? She hadn’t caught the whole of it, only the tail end. A haiku.

              _Just what can it be_

_that makes them cry so loudly?_

_but, ah, of course:_

_cicadas would know how empty_

_is this world of the cicada shell._

              Times like this, Kagome wished she’d been a better student of literature, so she could get a deeper read on it. She knew that cicada shells were _kigo_ [3] for late summer, a symbol of the ephemerality of life. Her best interpretation was that he referred to the souls trapped within the Shikon no Tama; the ones that battled and suffered so long, only to discover the ephemerality of their lives when the Shikon no Tama at last disappeared into her outstretched hands.

              Sesshoumaru said that when it was at its strongest, the Jewel sang.

              When it disappeared, she wondered, did it scream?

              The thought was perturbing.

              And had nothing to do with the problem at hand – what had changed?

              She resolved to raise the issue with Sesshoumaru whenever he got back. Surely she couldn’t be the only one feeling this way? As though a part of her was disconnected, now that he was away?

              “I mean,” she justified to herself, “he’s texting like, constantly, whenever he’s not calling.” And their conversation wasn’t exactly scintillating. Once, they stayed on the line together while she worked on her paper and he read the day’s newspaper, for about an hour. It had only happened once, but it had _happened_ , and that was a case in point, outlier though it may be.

              Kagome pushed her chair back from her desk and after a moment’s hesitation, shuffled to the genkan to put on her shoes and her coat. Only two days of class left, then one more day and Christmas. She was excited that the holiday coincided with the winter break again this year – hopefully it meant that they would be able to spend the day together. It was a _lover’s_ holiday, after all. And what was more loverlike than to plan to spend their time in each other’s presence, dawn to dusk?

              Not that they’d made plans.

              Just ‘in case’ ones, if he managed to get back home in time.

              Shouldering her bag, Kagome let herself out of her apartment. She made her way outside without really attending to the space or people around her, walking well-traversed ground down the familiar street toward campus. Toward Sesshoumaru’s house.

              Tanaka-san greeted her in the lobby downstairs, offering her a warm smile and calling the elevator for her with the faultless courtesy he always gave her, as though she had never once thrown up all over him and ruined a pair of his perfectly good shoes. He was good enough to never bring it up, either. Dear soul.

              The inside of Sesshoumaru’s apartment was perfectly still. The air was musty for lack of circulation. Feeling for what his nose would have to suffer upon his return, Kagome moved silently about the rooms, opening windows as she went, then settled herself down on the middle of his bed, wrapping his sheets and blankets around her, cocooning herself in a messy little nest as the winter cold rushed in from every side.

              The sheets smelled like him.

              _Do you think you’ll make it back for Christmas?_ she asked him again, head covered by the blankets, surrounded by the comfort of his warmth, his scent.

              As usual, his response came within seconds.

_I’ll find a way._

 

 

              The doorbell rang sometime after three in the morning. It didn’t feel like Sesshoumaru, but it had to be. Nobody else would come over this late, though ringing the bell was far from his usual M.O.

              Kagome stumbled out of bed, flipping her bedside lamp on as she went, stumbling over to the front door.

              Instead of Sesshoumaru, however, a stranger was at her door.

              At first, actually, when she’d swung the door open, she thought there was nobody there. But then a throat cleared, and she looked down.

              A small, green thing, with bulging yellow eyes, dressed primly in a little suit that she was sure he must have bought at the baby gap, because where else would you buy a suit that small? He had a certain... odor... something swampy, and smelled just as green as his skin looked.

              “Can I help you?” She managed in a voice that betrayed little of her surprise.

              The looked he gave her clearly passed judgement on her appearance. Okay, so yeah, her hair was sticking up in all directions and her face wasn’t made up, and her eyes were bleary with sleep and she was wearing what were possibly her most embarrassing pajamas and wrapped in a threadbare sweater. Fine. But what could he possibly have expected, calling on her at this hour?

              “Are you going to ask me in, human, or do you expect me to speak to you from outside your door?” He asked, instead of clarifying his purpose for dragging her from her bed, which did absolutely nothing to ingratiate himself to her.

              Kagome bristled. “You could tell me who you are, first, maybe. And what possible justification you could have that would convince me to let a complete stranger into my house at this unholy hour of the morning.”

              He blinked and gaped, his beaklike little mouth falling open, as though not able to compute her hostility. “You worthless human—” he squawked, “How dare you—”

              “You can come again at a reasonable hour and with a better attitude, if you like,” she replied, shutting the door impatiently into his steadily reddening face. She was sure if she waited, she would see steam coming out his ears. Traipsing smugly back to her bed, she reached for her nightstand to pull a pair of earplugs out of her drawer, ready to resolutely ignore any further disturbances on her doorstep, and sleep until her alarm alerted her that it was finally a reasonable time to be awake.

              The little green imp seemed to take her instructions to heart. Kagome could tell from the signature of youki that it wouldn’t be, but she was still heartbroken that it wasn’t Sesshoumaru at her door when there was a knock at nine thirty that morning, well after she’d showered and dressed, dolled herself up and tidied, hoping against hope that she might see him. But instead, there was the little green thing, standing impatiently, waiting to be let in once more.

              She said nothing upon seeing him, waiting for him to show an improvement in his manner toward her before she deigned to acknowledge his presence. His little brow tweaked.

              “Higurashi-sama,” he began, and the honorific surprised her, given the ‘worthless human’ he had tossed at her earlier. “I apologize for my rudeness and brazenness this morning. I have been sent on an errand of the greatest importance and in my haste to carry it out immediately upon my arrival in Japan, may have forgotten to consider the time.”

              This lengthy speech over with, he shot her a penetrating glare, as if daring her to refute him again. Instead, Kagome nodded once. “And you are?” she asked, only marginally softened by his demeanor.

              “My name is Jaken,” his petulant, grating little voice groused. He waited, but Kagome remained silent. “I am a faithful retainer of the great Sesshoumaru-sama’s Lady Mother,” he added, since his name on its own didn’t seem to hold any weight with her.

              Kagome stepped aside. “Well, come in then.” She watched as he moved around her to take in her tiny domain from the entryway, marveling once more at the diminutiveness of his little tailored suit. “Can I offer you some tea or a glass of water?”

              “Green tea if you have it,” he answered from his crouch at the genkan. He slipped off a pair of teeny-tiny Italian leather loafers and turned them to face the door before stepping up into the apartment. She was pleased that though he may have come from foreign parts, she could at least trust him not to track dirt into her home.

              “Have a seat at the kotatsu, please, [4]” she called from the kitchen as she busied herself with the electric kettle and setting out a pair of ceramic tea cups that she almost never used. Mama had once said, ‘better to have in case of good company’ and though at the time she had laughed right in her mother’s face and made a snide remark – something along the lines of when would she ever have anyone that could count as ‘good’ company, and what did that even mean in the first place – she was glad she had listened to her in the end.

              Especially if this was an emissary of Sesshoumaru’s _mother_.

              She froze as the reality, the gravity of that settled over her. _Oh no. I almost turned out my boyfriend’s mother’s vassal. What is_ wrong _with me?_

              But she managed to gather herself together with considerable aplomb and brought the tea things out to the kotatsu. She poured tidily and pushed his cup over to him. “What brings you all this way?” She asked, eventually, when it seemed like he needed some prompting to begin speaking once more.       

              Surprisingly, the green monster pursed his beaky little lips as he regarded her. “I have been instructed to greet you on behalf of My Lady, and to extend an invitation to you to meet her in the New Year.”

              “She wants to meet me?” Kagome repeated, a little incredulous and not bothering to hide it.

              Jaken nodded gravely, as though equally as taken aback, though the turn of his lips implied that he was far more disturbed by the prospect than she was.

              “Is Sesshoumaru coming too?”

              She asked this just as her guest was taking a sip of his tea; he sputtered his incredulity, specks of steaming hot fluid the color of his slimy skin spraying in every direction in the most disgusting spit-take she had ever seen. “Sesshoumaru?” He repeated, completely appalled. “Did you just call him ‘Sesshoumaru’, you wretched— you—”

              _I guess the veneer of civility was just that, huh._

              Kagome frowned fiercely. She wasn’t about to be insulted like this in her own home, especially not for being on familiar terms with the love of her life. She opened her mouth to tell him just that, when a booming voice from the genkan beat her to the punch. “Enough, Jaken,”

              She could feel the anger and tension within her dissipate almost instantaneously. How had she not felt his approach? That didn’t matter – he had probably recognized that it was Jaken with her and, curious as to what was being said, hid himself from them. What mattered was that _he was here._

“Sesshou—” she started, only to be interrupted by Jaken launching himself from the table and folding himself over into a trembling puddle of prostration at Sesshoumaru’s feet, forehead pressed into the floor, tears streaming from his bulbous eyes. “Sesshoumaru-sama!” he cried, over and over, a reverence and obeisance in his tone to rival his posture.

              Kagome sat grumpily back on her heels, frown reasserting itself. So much for a romantic reunion. She reached up to her neckline to tug on her necklace, but paused with her hand half-way there before setting it on her lap. There was no necklace anymore. No Shikon no Tama anymore.

              “Explain yourself,” Sesshoumaru demanded, pushing Jaken out of his path with his foot. He reached Kagome’s side and touched her shoulder, giving her a fleeting look so full of warmth and humor that she blinked. His hand trailed across her shoulders as he moved to her other side, and remained in contact with her when he parked himself on the floor cushion beside her. _Demonstrations_.

              Jaken whirled around to face them. “Your Lady Mother, she—”

              “What were Mother’s instructions?” again, that deadpan demand brooked no argument.

              Jaken groveled, resuming his previous bow. “Sesshoumaru-sama, you know I cannot reveal—”

              Harshly then, “Jaken.”

              Recoiling as though he’d been struck, Jaken scrambled back before pounding his forehead back into the floor. “She asked me to take the measure of the woman who has had the…” here, he raised his head to shoot a venomous look at Kagome, “the temerity—the, the… the _gall_ to stand at your side!” Again bowing low, his voice resumed its previous obsequious tones. “And to extend an invitation.”

              Sesshoumaru’s lips had quirked upward once or twice, giving Kagome the distinct impression that he _enjoyed_ the discomfiture of this appalling creature before them. She’d never taken him for a bully, but she could understand his satisfaction in putting this little booger in his place.

              “You will report back favorably,” he instructed, looking at his fingernails.

              Jaken’s head snapped up, disbelief drawing his mouth into a long ‘O’. “But—but, Sesshoumaru-sama—”

              “You will not disclose that I was present for this discussion, and you will report back favorably.” He had not so much as glanced up from his nails, and his free hand had drifted toward her to settle on its preferred perch on Kagome’s knee. Jaken’s eyes followed the movement as though magnetized, widening in horror with every progressive millimeter Sesshoumaru’s fingers neared her leg. When at last he touched down on her knee, Jaken turned a curious shade of green, off his usual colour, and Kagome was quite convinced he would pass out. Heedless of all of this, Sesshoumaru spoke on. “Kagome has tentatively accepted Mother’s invitation, though as she is a student and quite busy in her work, her compliance with any summons will be contingent on whether her prior obligations allow.”

              Jaken sputtered.

              Sesshoumaru looked up at long last.

              “Sesshoumaru-sama—”

              “Am I understood?”

              Jaken bowed deeply and pledged his compliance.

              “You are excused, Jaken.” It looked for a moment as though Jaken would protest, but one more sharp look from Sesshoumaru had the little green man scurrying for the door which slammed behind him as he left. He hadn’t even paused to put his shoes on properly. Rough treatment for what were undoubtedly expensively made, custom loafers.

              Kagome looked up at Sesshoumaru, barely suppressing a giggle, eyes squinting with mirth. “A little domineering of you,” she remarked, voice trembling with humor.

              “Her appears to rather like being dominated,” Sesshoumaru remarked, completely straight-faced, even when the comment sent Kagome into fits of laughter. “That was not a joke,” he offered eventually, eyes crinkling in fondness as he looked down at lover, writhing on the floor in giggles.

              Kagome’s sides were aching, she laughed so hard. When she’d managed to catch her breath, she put a hand on his arm and pulled herself back up to sitting. “Welcome home,” she said, peering up at him, still clinging to him even though she’d recovered her balance.

              “I’m home,” he murmured, and swooped down for a kiss.

              His lips were plush and soft, a little moist, and warm, and gentle and perfect on hers. She sighed against him, going boneless in his arms. “I missed you,” she said. “It felt like some part of me was missing,” she added, before remembering that those weren’t just flowery words to romanticize her feelings about his absence. She straightened and searched his face. “I mean it. Something’s been different. Have you noticed? I felt like when you were gone some part of me was _missing_. It ached. It was a real feeling.” A rising urgency in her voice matched the tightening grip on his arms.

              “I too have noted some… alterations in my perceptions of the world and the space you occupy within it.” He, by contrast, was calm, and a lazy tendril of youki swirled around them reminding her that maybe she should be too. “I am not certain that I can qualify the nature of the change any better than you have, however. My experience was similar.”

              They pondered over that in silence for a beat before Sesshoumaru reached into his pocket. “I wanted to bring you the traditional Christmas meal,” his voice was uncharacteristically hesitant. Kagome smiled, remembering how he had _almost_ brought her fried chicken and cake last year too. “It is too early in the day, however, so I hope that this will do in lieu of the feast.” He drew his hand from his pocket; in his palm, a small, black velvet box.

              Kagome’s heart stopped – she was certain he heard that – and she kept perfectly still until its beating resumed. “You didn’t have to get me anything, Sesshoumaru,” she said, voice sounding small in her ears. “Can I open it?”

              He pressed the gift into her hands.

              Before doing anything else, Kagome leaned closer to him, waiting for his arm to wrap back around her, where it belonged. She sucked in a breath and let it out slow, before finally popping the lid open on the little jewelry box.

              Inside was a pink pearl, a good half-inch in diameter, strung on a delicate rose-gold chain. Kagome gasped her pleasure. Smaller than the Shikon no Tama, certainly, but… “I’ve never seen one this big,” she marveled, glancing up at him before touching a fingertip to the smooth, glossy surface of the pearl.

              “It is a youkai creation,” he explained.

              “A demon oyster?”

              “Indeed. It will never lose its lustre.” He reached out. “May I?”

              Kagome passed him the box and he tenderly removed the pendant and chain from its confines. She turned, one arm holding her hair out of the way for him. He clasped it for her, fingers lingering on her neck, tracing up to her hairline as he leaned forward to press a kiss behind her ear. “Pearls can represent wisdom through experience,” he whispered, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her into his lap.

              Her hand flew up to touch his gift, and she glowed with her happiness. “It’s beautiful,” she breathed, looking down at it where it lay over the thick cable knit of her black sweater, which was coincidentally well matched. “Thank you, Sesshoumaru.”

              “They are also believed to offer protection, and attract luck.”

              “Luck!” Kagome laughed. “I need all the luck I can get!” She turned, looking up at him over her shoulder as much as she could in this position. “Speaking of which, do you remember what we did with my omikuji fortune this last year…?”

              “I do,” he said, but her chance to ask any further about it was lost to the kiss that came next.

              She thought to raise the topic any number of times over the ensuing days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, however, each time, something happened to head her off at the pass. In the end, she let the question go. Yeah, it would be nice to know, but in the grand scheme of things, did it really matter?

              Really, the only question of import was whether or not she had done her best, regardless of whatever was happening around her. And the answer to that, she could say with some degree of confidence, was that, yeah, she had made the most of the situations that she had found herself in this year. She had fought hard to meet the ends she wanted to see, instead of passively waiting for something good to come of her hopes. She was flourishing in school. Her internship had gone well. She’d been sick, but she came out the other end stronger than she went in. Her relationship went through a rough patch there for a while, but now… She was proud of the twelve months that had passed behind her, even though there were bits that hadn’t gone quite as she would have wanted them to.

              Overall, it had been a pretty okay year.

              So she let the idea of rereading the haiku go. Instead of reflecting further on the past in detail go, and instead focused on the future. She had another year to look forward to.

              One in which she would have to... meet with Sesshoumaru’s mother...?

              _How did I get myself into_ that _mess?_

              Kagome groaned and rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand. Sesshoumaru, from where he sat in the driver’s seat of his luxurious vehicle, cast her a brief look of concern before returning his attention to the road. “Something the matter?” he asked, hand sneaking toward her thigh.

              “Just dreading meeting your mom is all,” Kagome grumbled. Maybe it wasn’t fair of her, but after hearing what Jaken’s instructions were, she didn’t feel predisposed to warm feelings toward the mysterious Lady Mother. “Why does she even want to meet me, anyway? How did she find out about us?”

              “Mother... Mother has eyes everywhere. And we have not been exactly secretive regarding our association,” he replied, flicking on the blinkers and sliding the car into the right lane before turning off on the highway exit that led toward Higurashi Shrine.

              They were on their way home to spend the night with Kagome’s family before passing New Year’s Eve at the Shrine as was her custom, and then ringing in the New Year together. His mother had invited her to visit in the first few days after that, before classes restarted, but Sesshoumaru had produced an excellent excuse – he wanted to be present and had a work-related function to attend to – thus deferring the initial meeting until a little further into the opening year. He assured her he another excuse lined up for when the next invite rolled around: that Kagome didn’t have a passport. But once she had one, he’d warned her, their procrastinating would have to come to an end.

              “Are you going to be okay staying with Mama and Souta?” Kagome asked at length. “Souta sort of fancies himself the man of the house since Grandpa’s not all there. Which reminds me, please prepare yourself for Grandpa to throw salt at you. He _will_ do it, guaranteed.”

              Sesshoumaru’s lips quirked upward for a moment, no doubt picturing just what that might look like, or maybe contemplating just how futile such an attempt at an exorcism would actually be. “I am prepared for any given eventuality at any time. Do not worry my account, please.”

              Kagome nodded abstractedly and returned her gaze to the city scenery passing by outside the window.

              They weren’t far now. A sudden urgency welled up in her, a desperation to _warn_ him. All _kinds_ of things popped up into her mind. Things she needed to prepare him for; eccentricities to hopefully inure him to so that he wouldn’t judge her family too harshly. She suppressed the desire with a ferocity that brought a furrow to her brow.

              It occurred to her after brief reflection that for as much as she championed her desire to be a part of his life, she hadn’t done over-much to include him in hers; at least, not so far as her family was concerned. But the motivating factor there was fear of rejection, more than anything else. Her family was so... human. So normal. She didn’t think that he could be among them for long without coming the realization once more that she was really just _one of them_ and not some special being like himself, and there was a consuming fear that that would inevitably lead to him deciding that maybe he didn’t need to have her in his life after all…

              Completely ridiculous, of course, but fear was an irrational beast, and it clawed at her despite all of her arguments that he was perfectly, painfully aware of her humanity, and that he was beyond prepared for anything her crazy, eccentric family could possibly have to throw at him.

              Salt, sass, thinly veiled maternal threats, or otherwise.

              Before she had realized it, they had arrived. She took in a deep, shuddering breath, gathered her courage, and moved her hand to the door handle.

              Sesshoumaru discreetly summoned a cloud beneath their feet so that she didn’t have to lumber inelegantly up the stairs with their luggage in tow. His arm swung casually over her shoulder with an almost proprietary air that wasn’t usually there for their jaunts in the outdoors where anyone could see them. She glanced up at him but did not question his choice. He didn’t mind being spotted, by his family or hers, and he was nothing if not clear-headed.

              “You’re not nervous?” she asked anyway, just to be safe.

              “Nervous? No.” He seemed to be holding something back.

              “What, then?”

              “I am anxious to make a good impression. This is your family; they are important to you.”

              “They already love you, Sesshoumaru,” she consoled, touching his forearm in reassurance.

              “That is only true insofar as they recall me being at your side as you were ailing,” he hedged. “They do not know me.”

              They were crossing the Shrine grounds towards the back, where the little house was illuminated against the early winter darkness. Snow crunched underfoot, the air nipped at her nose. All of this was secondary in her attention.

              “Are you worried that they might not like you once they do?”

              He said nothing, but his silence offered answer enough.

              Kagome, wishing she had the facility with words to know just what to say to set his mind at ease, knew nonetheless that if she tried, she would put a foot wrong and bungle the attempt. So she opted instead to try for nonverbal reinforcement, the way he so often did. She reached with herself, heart first, a tendril of pink energy whipping out from the quiescent pool at the bottom of her soul. Her face was contorting with concentration, she could feel how stupid she must look, but she pushed forth the full force of her love and acceptance toward him. _This is who I am, and I love you for who you are_ , she thought, as though thinking the words would transmit them to him. _You’ve nothing to worry about, they’ll love you too_.

              Of course, there was no way those thoughts were transmitting, but maybe the simpler feelings behind them were, if the marginal release in tension in his shoulders were any indication.

              “Your face looks ridiculous,” he murmured, chucking her under the chin affectionately.

              She twisted away from him, face reddening, but the front door of her childhood home slammed open and Souta dashed out into the cold to greet them.  

             

              Kagome awoke in her childhood bed, on her own. Or— that wasn’t precisely true. Buyo was with her, starting directly into her face, as though the intensity of his little glare would rouse her into consciousness. And who’s to say? Maybe it had. His tail flicked in self-satisfaction as he climbed atop her over her thick coverlets and proceeded to knead contentedly at her belly. A ‘welcome home’ of sorts. She hadn’t stayed the night at her mother’s house for a long time, now. It felt like at least as long as she had known Sesshoumaru at any rate.

              As soon as her thoughts alighted on the dreamy youkai who was sleeping in Souta’s bedroom down the hall – a little smile flickered over her face as she recalled the murderous look on the little pipsqueak’s face when their mother revealed that he’d been cast out of his own room to sleep on the living room couch, thus opening the room for their honored guest – Kagome shot upright, dislodging Buyo from his work. He grumbled resentfully and lumbered his pudgy little body down toward the floor, intent on abandoning her now that his affections had been so rudely rebuffed. She didn’t blame him.

              Kagome too slipped out of bed, wrapped herself up in a tatty robe that had been hanging behind her bedroom door for the better part of ten years, and rooted around for her slippers. Her toes were numb by the time she dug them into the matted faux fur lining of her old house shoes, which she had kicked thoughtlessly under the bed in her haste to climb in the night before. She’d been so annoyed at her mother and grandfather for keeping Sesshoumaru back to give him the third degree, that she had stormed upstairs and gone into a petulant sleep almost the second her head hit the pillow.

              Without another second’s waste, Kagome exited her bedroom and made her way down the hall, reaching out with her energy, seeking the familiar signature of youki, that incredible well of power that she associated with the man she loved. To her entire lack of surprise, she followed it out of the house and into the yard, where the daiyoukai was bare-chested, his red and white hankimono discarded, black boots leaving prints in the snow, and steam rising off of his heated flesh.

              She shut the door behind her to keep the cold out of the house, and though she was shivering herself, leaned in the frame and watched him.

              He was stunning.

              She had seen him in combat just the once – she couldn’t call their little scuffle combat, it had been so one-sided – and he had been so relaxed, appearing so utterly _unchallenged_ when facing down Naraku that Kagome wondered if he ever even had need to train himself, he was so strong. When he taught her how to wield the bow and arrow, that was the closest she had ever seen to Sesshoumaru dedicating himself to training in a way that exerted him, and even then, it was a far cry from actual ‘exertion’ at the time.

              But now, there was a shimmering sheen of sweat on his pale skin, his silver hair whipped and fanned behind him as he twirled and lunged and stepped and swung, body moving through forms that he had practiced so well and so often that he could likely do them in his sleep. Light glinted off the finely honed blade in his hands, twinkling in the morning light like a late star. But Sesshoumaru outshone it.  was fluidity and elegance. He was a blazing inferno of heat and energy, melting the snow as it fell through the air around him.

              Kagome felt a wave of lust rise over her; her body warming, softening.

              Sesshoumaru immediately stopped in his movements and turned, eyeing her sharply.

              One eyebrow rose sharply.

              Kagome huffed out a laugh and crossed her arms across her chest. “Good morning, Sesshoumaru.”

              He sheathed his sword, retrieved his hankimono and draped it over his shoulders. “Good morning, Kagome,” he replied, approaching her with intent easily read in each step he took. He stopped a hairsbreadth from her; she no longer felt the chill of the winter air, she was melting from the outside in. With the pad of a gentle finger, he tipped her chin up and placed a soft kiss on her lips. Kagome frowned a little and the soft chuckle he let out exacerbated her frustration. “Disappointed? We have too much of an audience for the activities that you’ve no doubt been envisioning.”

              “Oh?” She leaned around him to get a view of what was behind, and saw, leaning against the fencing around the Goshinboku, her younger brother, well-bundled-up, with a steaming mug in hand. She was sure he had stars in his eyes while Sesshoumaru was training, but the only look on his face now was pure disgust. “Hey twerp!” She called.

              “Get a room!” He yelled back.

              Kagome cocked a brow and looked pointedly at Sesshoumaru. “Shall we go to your room, then?”

              “Ugh, disgusting, I meant _your_ room!” Souta yelled, jumping to his feet.

              Kagome stuck her tongue out and let herself back into the house. She waited behind the door a moment, hearing his footsteps distancing themselves from her. She closed her eyes and focused, feeling for the movement of his youki, the way it jumped and paced and spun in tandem with his physical form.

              When she was sure he was immersed in his task once more, Kagome pursed her lips in concentration and tried to repeat what she had accomplished the day before: she reached with a lashing of her reiki, loading up with the feeling closest to her heart just at this moment.

              _Oh, Sesshoumaru,_ she thought, reinforcing the feeling with the words, _you make me so **hot**_.

              A smug little smirk accompanied her up the stairs when Sesshoumaru’s youki swelled and stilled abruptly, and from somewhere in the yard, Souta’s voice rang out, “What’s wrong Sesshoumaru-san? Why’d you stop?”

             

 

              New Year’s preparations and celebrations were in full swing by ten in the morning. The ancillary staff had arrived a little after eight in the morning, and the steady stream of visitors to the Shrine increased to regular influx of people by ten. Kagome, Souta, and even Sesshoumaru were wrapped up in doing little chores to help get the day off on the right foot. It was a small shrine, and as a family, only Grandpa really had much to do with its running, but nobody was safe from errand-running on these, the biggest event days of the year.

              The sun set before Kagome had a chance to do any reveling of her own. Sesshoumaru took her hand and absconded with her back into the house to sit on the living room couch and rest for a minute, ostensibly, though she ended up falling asleep propped up against his shoulder, and he only woke her when it was time for dinner.

              Still drowsy, but warm and ensconced in both her winter coat and her lover’s arms, Kagome wandered around the shrine, beautifully lit with paper lanterns. They walked to the concessions stalls and bought takoyaki and yakitori to eat, before her mother passed them in the crowd of people and pressed a thermos of hot miso soup into Kagome’s hands.

              They ambled about, soaking in the atmosphere, and before she could register it, an hour had passed, and then another. She glanced at her watch. Just a few minutes left until the New Year chimed in, until the fireworks went off.

              Languorously, she tilted her head back to peer at him – his face tilted up to admire the stars in the distance. The golden light reflected off Sesshoumaru’s hair and lit him like an angel glowing in the light of heaven. His eyes looked more like their youkai coloring than they ever had, despite his human guise, and despite the crowd of bodies moving about them, she felt as though they were in a dream world consisting of only the two of them.

              She sighed her happiness, and he met her gaze. “I have a gift for you,” he said, after a long moment of regarding each other in silence.

              “Another?” She asked, reaching up to touch her coat over where the pearl hung around her neck.

              “And a much better one.”

              Her heartbeat escalated.

              He took her hand and led her away from the crowd toward the Goshinboku, seating her at a bench close by. Instead of taking a seat beside her, he reached into his pocket and considered the object in his hand, just out of her line of sight. “Something you have been thinking of for some time, I am certain.”

              She held her breath.

              He extended his left hand expectantly, and Kagome crossed the expanse to settle her fingertips within his, anticipation making her digits tremble.

              His fingers closed around hers, and he studied her in silence. At length he sucked in a slow breath and spoke, “I have found it to be remarkably accurate, yet again.”

              He flipped her hand over in his and deposited a precisely folded strip of paper into her open palm.

              “Oh!” Kagome exclaimed, at once recognizing and happy to see her old omikuji fortune, and simultaneously disappointed that _this_ had been the surprise. She glanced up to him and smiled, choosing to focus on her pleasure for a question answered, as her fingers dexterously unfolded the little fortune and spread it out on her lap.

              “Thank you for keeping it,” she whispered, still marveling.

              Sesshoumaru’s lips firmed. She knew that look – the one that spoke of hesitation. “In truth, this fortune of yours has weighed heavily on my mind this year through.”

              Kagome tilted her head. “Really? Why?” A puff of her hot breath escaped into the air before her.

              “Do you recall the words you used when you put it into my hands to dispose of?” he asked. She shook her head. “I remember exactly. You said, ‘You decide. It was nice to read back on it at the end of the year, but I don’t know that I want to have it on my mind for the next twelve months.’ Not—” he looked down at his fingers, where they had moved to wrap around hers, “not particularly compelling statements on their own, though perhaps a little prophetic in my case.” A wry smile. “But what you said next…”

              Kagome shook her head. She didn’t remember.

              “You said that you would wonder, but only for a while. That life is too short for a long memory.”

              When he looked up at her again, Kagome was struck by the depth of the struggle those words had set off inside of him. _Oh_. They had started the New Year ready to be together and take things as they came, and then she had gone and said _that_ , and reminded him that she would be dead soon enough that she needn’t even bother to _remember_ … while at the same time being so glib and offhand about her own mortality, like it didn’t even matter _to her_.

              _You **idiot**_.

              “In the end, I decided to keep it for you. Your last fortune being eerily accurate, I was curious to see whether the results would replicate, regardless of the other feelings that keeping it engendered within me. I have never felt such strong emotions from merely knowing an inconsequential piece of paper _exists_ , tucked away in my desk drawer though it may have been.”

              Kagome’s smile was weak. She was still beating herself up. “And how was it, after all? Accurate?”

              “ _Remarkably_ accurate, to the last,” Sesshoumaru murmured, settling down on the bench beside her.

              Kagome tucked her chin and directed her gaze to the paper. And read.  And as she read, she considered. A Half-Blessing sounded about right.

Not at all like snow

so ready to melt away—

these cherry blossoms,

fallen but then lifted again

by storm winds in the garden.

              She reread the haiku twice. With a smile, she considered to herself that no matter how she read it, she always read herself as the sakura; that would be Bokusenou’s fault. Snow would be the symbol of a life lived once; fallen and melted away. And she, fallen, and then born again, borne back to life by the storm winds – Sesshoumaru, perhaps, if this was about literal life. On the one hand, it could be an observation that she had been reborn, or more accurately, brought back to life, that she had another life-cycle to experience yet. On the other, it could be a statement about perseverance; she had more than one chance to get things right, to see things through to the end. She fancied either reading.

              Seeing Sesshoumaru as a storm wind in the garden of her life was a beautiful image, though.

              Love: Your challenge will meet with failure.  Her challenge had—but her compromise had not.

              Illness: Prepare for a long illness. And how long it had been!

              Studies: You will learn even what you did not desire to know. She had prospered in school, though she had learned some damning history about her lover… and some bad habits which had landed her with her illness.

              Competition: You will be your biggest competition **.** True enough. Naraku had called her a self-saboteur once, hadn’t he? Maybe it was more true than she had given him credit for.

              Your Wish: Your wish will be realized. This one gave her pause. Which wish? Some wishes had. Others…? Plus, the _big_ wish, the one she would have made on the Shikon no Tama, she hadn’t even been given the chance to make.

              Business: Do not mix business and pleasure. She learned that one on early on, actually, and it had served her well, insofar as school was concerned.

              An Expected Visitor: They will arrive when you need them. Ikami-san’s guidance had come at just the right moment, and had helped her make strides in her training that would have taken her much longer to accomplish otherwise.

              Travel: Travel will prove fruitful. Indeed, each trip away had resulted in something positive for her, or for the both of them.

              A Thing You Have Lost: You will find it if you search for it. Kagome’s heart constricted on reading this one. It still hurt to think of the aching loss— it didn’t matter. She’d gotten it back. _My reiki is mine again. And stronger and better than ever._

              Marriage Proposal: It will not come.

              Oh.

              Her tongue glued itself to the roof of her mouth.

              _Oh. Well. I already knew that wasn’t gonna happen, no matter how much a girl might hope._

              “Accurate to the last,” she murmured thinly. Anxious for a distraction, she glanced at her watch. “Oh!” She started to her feet.

              The crowd shushed, then roared.

              The countdown commenced.

              The New Year chimed in.  

              While the fireworks were exploding above them, Kagome turned her face resolutely toward the sky. Though she wanted her New Year’s Kiss, she wanted to hide her disappointment all the more.

              Sesshoumaru’s arms wrapped around her from behind, and his lips ghosted over her ear, gently as he spoke. “ _Akemashite Omedetou_ ,” he whispered the New Years’ greeting so that she could feel the shape of the words against her skin.

              One more year behind them, and one more to look forward to together. Despite the little pang in her heart a moment before, she smiled to herself. Regardless of the shape of their relationship, she was just happy to be beside him.

              “ _Akemashite Omedetou,_ ” she replied in kind, voice just as soft, knowing that despite the booms above and the noise of the crowd, he could hear her just fine.

              “And it can finally be time for the ‘much better one’. My time away has been spent laying the groundwork for this, and though I present it to you, in reality it is a gift that _you_ will be giving _me_.”

              _Hmm?_

Kagome turned a little in his embrace, a question lighting her eyes. Realization dawned immediately. “Oh _no._ I’m sorry, I know I should’ve gotten you something for Christmas, but you _have everything_ , and you’re the least materialistic—”

              His lips touched gently to hers, silencing the panicked remorse spilling from her mouth. Her body turned to face his by force of strong habit, and her hands planted themselves on his chest in their familiar perches.

              Contrary to custom, he peeled her fingers from him and gathered them between their bodies.

              She didn’t feel the cold, or the sudden humid cast in the air as it began to snow—she didn’t see that above them, the fireworks lit the sky in pinks and reds; cherry blossoms, then chrysanthemums blooming in the heavens, sparkling with life. Her eyes were only for him.

              And then, in the way that Sesshoumaru always communicated what was most important without ever speaking a word, he pressed one more lingering kiss to her lips, and a cold, solitaire ring into her hands.

               

 

-+-

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case ya’ll were wondering, Kiku, or Japanese chrysanthemums, are symbol of longevity.  
> 
> And there we have it! Han-Kichi is complete! Only one chapter left—a little epilogue to carry that sweet taste forward just a little longer – but that’s all!
> 
> Thank you for playing! The verbatim Hannibal quote was “You are moving smoothly and slowly, carrying your concentration like a brimming cup.” Pure poetry. 
> 
>  
> 
> And the aye’s have it, unanimously! Sesshoumaru’s POV will be next in the works. No guarantees on publication date but I’m shooting for the week of 9/1 or thereabouts.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Footnotes:
> 
> [1] Okazu: Side-dish! Usually this word refers to side-dishes while eating/drinking. It can also be used as slang to refer to your spank bank. So that’s a thing.
> 
> [2] Shakai-jin: A member of society -- this is like, someone who is no longer a student, who is working, who is ‘a real adult’.
> 
> [3] Kigo: Literally “season words”, these are words that are associated with a particular season, for Japanese poetry. Fun ones include the moon (Autumn, when its best viewed), stilts (winter), and cats in love (unsurprisingly, spring; I just like that it’s included in the list!). Many Japanese dictionaries will include which season a word belongs to in its entry. There are also kigo dictionaries. This shit got INTENSE, man, for haiku poets – in order for it to truly be a good poem, good use of kigo was essential, not just fitting the prescribed syllable structure (also having juxtaposing images was key but not relevant to this footnote, which is why it’s just in this parenthetical).  
> 
> [4] Kotatsu: A table, with a heating element under the top, and a comforter that extends out to all sides to trap the warmth under the table. NEVER USE ONE. IT IS A TRAP. A TRAP OF WARMTH AND COMFORT AND THERE IS NO ESCAPE.


	12. An Epilogue for an Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I posted two chapters together so make sure you read the previous chapter first!
> 
> And here it is… the epilogue of the sequelogue that took much longer to finish than it had any right to!

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**Han-Kichi : An Omikuji Epilogue**

An Epilogue for an Epilogue

 

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              Fingers fiddling absently with the pink pearl that had rolled into the little divot between her clavicles, Kagome’s eyes fixed themselves on what could either be a water spot or an insect that had yet to move. Her mind, though, was somewhere in a shady wood, at the foot of a sprawling Japanese Magnolia tree.

              Sesshoumaru’s arm, draping itself over her waist, brought her attention back to the present. He nudged her with his nose, and she sucked in a stuttering breath. She released it on a long ‘mmm’, stretching her own arms up. “I’m fine, just thinking.”

              He tightened his arm around her and she touched her fingers to his forearm, studying the sparkling stone on her left ring finger. One more squeeze.

              She answered his unspoken question without further prompting. “You know, I just keep coming back to Bokusenou-sama and how weird he was acting the last time we were there.”

              Sesshoumaru was likely not expecting that thought trajectory. The bed dipped as he propped himself up on his elbow. He tucked his hair behind his ear to keep it from spilling over into her face, and levelled her with an appraising look. “What in particular holds your attention?”

              Kagome screwed up her nose. “Some haiku about cicadas.”

              He hummed low in his throat. His thumb swept across her cheekbone in a tender caress. “Cicadas would know, how empty is this world of the cicada shell,” he quoted offhand, and Kagome’s brows rose. She had never taken him for a student of poetry, which she supposed in retrospect was rather silly; literary proficiency having been important social currency back in the day.

              “You’re good at reciting poetry?” She asked coyly, trailing a finger up his arm toward his shoulder. He nodded without conceit. “Can you think of one for us?”

              Sesshoumaru’s head tilted in consideration, and then his eyes began to glimmer in good humor. “Not satisfied

with enticements in the branches,

the storm winds blow on

over the grounds of a garden

strewn with fallen blossoms.”

              Kagome immediately recognized the similarity it held to the poem on her fortune last year. She had compared him to the storm, in the garden of her life back then. If the metaphor held… Kagome arranged her features to a look of offense. “So what, does that mean you’re slumming it? Youkai leaves in the tree not exciting enough for you, you have to take up with some fallen sakura?”

              He chuckled. “A novel interpretation.” A kiss was all it took to pacify her, though he did not elaborate as to _his_ interpretation of the haiku he gave her.  Instead he changed back to the original topic. “If I recall correctly, at the time, he found himself quite overcome. To bear witness to the end of an object which has been deemed an object of legend must have struck a chord with him; he is, after all, the last of his own kind.” He paused. “By another token, I believe he may have chosen that particular haiku as an insult to myself.”

              Kagome blinked. She moved up on to her elbows and Sesshoumaru scooted up in his bed, moving to lean against the headboard. “Why would he want to insult you?”

              “It is a poem of mourning an empty life,” he said simply. “That only they would recognize as empty, for having lived it. The Shikon no Tama is precious; you mourned it, because you have held things precious.”

              There was a rippling disturbance in the flow of his youki, and Kagome remembered, how once, in his kitchen, long ago, he had told her of his father. ‘Once, my father asked me if I had someone to protect. I told him I had no need of such things.’ Gently, she reached for him with her hand and her spirit, seeking to gentle his disquiet. “But you _do_ hold things precious, Sesshoumaru.”

              “Before it was the Shikon no Tama to you, it was a cherished gift from your father, regardless of its actual value,” he said. “But you are not incorrect. I do hold someone precious,” he cupped her jaw, tenderness in his touch. “It may have been years yet before I’d staked my claim upon you, however, were it not for Bokusenou’s slight,” he added, a little apologetically. “Time…”

              “I understand,” Kagome said, turning her face into his palm and kissing him gently. To a man of his infinite years, time would get away from him. “We’ll have to work a little on that wording though, Sesshoumaru. Staking a claim? I’m a progressive woman.”

              His lips ticked upward, and he pulled her close.

              They weren’t quite living together but it was a near thing. As soon as the ring had made it on her finger, he had made his disdain of her living situation – which had been quite clear before – an issue of contention, and she had effectively moved in, spending four or five nights a week in his apartment on average.

              Nobody could know about the engagement yet, of course, since he was still a member of the faculty, so she always left the ring in a little dish by the door on her way out. She had told Sango and Miroku, though, and their reaction had been appropriately extravagant (with a curiously competitive and assessing gleam in Miroku’s eyes as he examined the photo of her new jewelry). Like the other couple, who she was sure would be making their ‘soon to be newlyweds’ status official sooner than later, Kagome and Sesshoumaru had developed a sweetly domestic routine at home.

              Now, bundled in a luxurious, plush red robe, with her feet toasty and warm in the house slippers Sesshoumaru had upgraded her to, she trailed after him into the kitchen. He moved to the refrigerator and pulled out the ingredients for whatever breakfast he was planning, and Kagome made her way to the coffee machine to fill it with grounds and pour water into the reservoir.

              They moved around in a companionable silence, dancing around each other in the little space with practiced ease. When the coffee was ready, she set out two mugs and pulled the pot out of the machine. Sesshoumaru had just finished plating up, a little bowl of rice topped with salmon, a pair of chopsticks before each setting. He leaned against the counter, waiting for her to finish no doubt, so that he could set their coffees beside their meals.

              Kagome glanced up at him and shot him a smile, pouring one mug and passing it to him. When she turned back to pour the second, her elbow collided with the edge of the counter, and the pain that ratcheted up her arm splayed her fingers open.

              She gasped, fumbled the coffee pot. Sesshoumaru came immediately to her side, yanking her hand away from the danger, and Kagome dropped the pot, which it crashed in an explosion of coffee and broken glass. Though the robe and slippers protected her from the broken pot, the freshly boiled coffee had already poured all over her hands as she bobbled it, scalding the delicate, thin skin of her hands and fingers and up her forearms.

              Blinking through her tears, voice trapped in her throat from the pain, Kagome followed dumbly as Sesshoumaru moved her to the sink and ran ice cold tap water over the injuries. To her surprise, his hand joined hers—some of the coffee had landed on the back of his left hand, scalding him just as badly.

              She watched in fascination as his skin repaired itself under the tap, bright red and blistering flesh soothed not from the temperature of the water, but by the healing stream of his youki repairing the damage from the burn.

              His attention was not on his wounds, but hers.

              Kagome gasped when he harshly gripped her hands in his, then released her to turn off the tap water.

              It took a moment for her brain to catch up with what had just happened. He’d gripped her hard. There was no pain. She studied her fingers, her palms, her forearms. Just the way his wounds had healed themselves, so had hers.

              “What…?”

              He was eyeing her with an intensity as though he had never truly seen her before. Slowly, he leaned in and brought his nose over her neck, taking an indelicate sniff. When he pulled back, the expression in his eyes had regained its usual tender regard, though the wonder remained. “Hmm.”

              “Sesshoumaru... I’ve never done that before. I’ve healed faster than the average human, yeah, but…” she stared at the new skin, “not _that_ fast.”

              “When was your most recent injury?”

              “Um… the blisters, from the archery lessons…” she blinked up at him, eyes wide. “…Before the Shikon no Tama disappeared.”

              He picked her up gently, moving her away from the shattered glass all over the kitchen floor, and settled her in front of her breakfast in a silent command to eat. “Oppositional and interdependent,” he murmured thoughtfully as he seated himself beside her, eating in his usual sedate manner, though his gaze never strayed far from her.

              For a moment, Kagome had a flashback to a clearing in the wood, with an observant Magnolia Tree watching on, and feeling in her heart that all she could ever want was to spend forever at Sesshoumaru’s side. The wish she never got to make.

              Maybe it _had_ come true.

              With a smile, she picked up her chopsticks, and tucked into her breakfast.

 

~End~

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: A big ol’ thank you to you lovely readers, those of you who have taken the time to click, to kudos, or to review. Writing is like performance art in a way; the artist will always give a more enthusiastic performance for an audience that is clearly invested in what’s happening onstage.
> 
> Elizabeth and Ines, my Right and Left hands, have made this work possible, honestly. They are kind and wonderful and patient, and are sweet enough to phrase corrections for blatant errors as gentle suggestions. Fragile writerly ego, saved! I love and appreciate them, and you should too.
> 
>  
> 
> As promised, Sesshoumaru’s POV will be next in the works.
> 
> What would you like to see, in reading from his perspective? Any questions you want this silent warrior to answer for you?
> 
> No guarantees on publication date but I’m shooting for the week of 9/1 or thereabouts.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> No footnotes, but in case you wanted to see the central haiku in Japanese:
> 
>  
> 
> Not at all like snow
> 
> so ready to melt away—
> 
> these cherry blossoms
> 
> Fallen but then lifted again
> 
> by storm winds in the garden.
> 
>  
> 
> 消えがての          (kiegate no)
> 
> 雪とも見えず       (yuki to mo miezu)
> 
> 櫻花               (sakurabana)
> 
> 積もればはらう     (tsumoreba harau)
> 
> 庭の嵐に           (niwa no arashi ni)


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